For his first solo show in France, Stefan Brüggemann (born in 1975 in Mexico City) has brought together a selection of works—reversed mirrors, wording made with adhesive lettering, a pile of posters—which subversively upset the rules of the art game, in particular, here, those governing representation and its content. His practice of refusal, which he gives shape to in deliberately very remote works, confronts viewers with what art is, and the expectations they have of it, but also, in a broader way, with the futility and the very state of the world and of culture.

Stefan Brüggemann’s proposition is as paradoxical as it is provocative, in the way he plays with artistic codes, the better to reduce them to nothing. As a keen recycler, he takes up certain art forms as sources available for his own work. Art history tumbles into oblivion in favour of the surface of images. For example, he uses typography, also making reference to communication methods. In his recent paintings (Obliteration Series, 2006), the images are erased with a silvery colour which conjures up body painting. The nihilist posture comes across in an often seductive way, ensnaring the spectator in his/her own art culture. In this sense, he describes his praxis as TWISTED CONCEPTUAL POP, an association that is nothing if not paradoxical. There is a lengthy tradition of artists working counter to what is expected of them. Stefan Brüggemann’s work pursues this tack relentlessly, the better to confront us with the logic of the state of the world and existence, like an almost sociological observation.

The exhibition is constructed in three areas, between which many links can be made. A small entrance room is painted all in black, with, on the floor, a pile of posters with white wording printed on a similarly black ground—references to minimal sculpture and political art which Stefan Brüggemann one more activates the better to underscore the uselessness of all political ambition in art, along with all content-related dimensions.

Two rooms echo each other on either side. Five reversed mirrors, facing the wall, are shown in one room, and five sentences made with black adhesive lettering are written on the walls of the other room, in an interplay of reciprocity. The mirror may be a recent form in Stefan Brüggemann’s work, but the sentences, on the other hand, are very representative of what he has been developing since the mid-1990s. He has actually made very plentiful use of language to deny today’s norm of the “all-communicational”, where everyone is summoned to explain, comment, and elucidate, until the cows come home. Stefan Brüggemann sets up a language of refusal, often negative postulates affirming void, absence and impossibility. The texts he has chosen here refer to the author’s position, or the nature of the work. They are provocative in what they proclaim, displaying a cynical stance.

The five mirrors turned towards the wall echo, as if in the negative, the five texts, and assert the refusal of their function. Nothing can be reflected in them. No images. No ideas. By reversing the mirror, Stefan Brüggemann denies this relation between art and reality, and art and the viewer. The mirror also shows the simultaneity between work and viewer, present value, and value of the conscious presence of the world, which Stefan Brüggemann here seems to empty out: FROM ANYTHING TO ANYTHING IN NO TIME, he writes on the exhibition wall. In an interview with Hans-Ulrich Obrist published in his catalogue Capitalism and Schizophrenia, he declared, with regard to a project focused on On Kawara’s oeuvre: “I’d like to find a timeless attitude towards time and something that becomes timeless” (cat. Stefan Brüggemann, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Turner, 2004, p.15). If the Internet is a work source for the artist, its time-related reality can nevertheless be summoned up. Because no information on it can ever really be deleted, all the information on it is mixed with an almost indeterminate time-frame.

As a perfect reflection of a world where tomorrows no longer lay any claim to sing, the work seriously delivers the truths of the day, fuelled by the works of conceptual artists, pursuing the forms of negativism which marked 20th century art, in their nihilistic rather than romantic aspect—forms involving the end of myths and beliefs, including those of creation. The works refer at times brutally to the society of disappointment that is ours, setting the individual face to face with him/herself in a world with no geographical or temporal landmarks, a world that is globalized and purposeless.

Claire Legrand, head of public services.

Stefan Brüggemann lives and works in London and Mexico City.

Selected shows: Frac Bourgogne (Dijon – FR), 2008, solo ; 10 New Works, Galería de Arte Mexicano, (Mexico City – MX), 2008, solo; Black Box, Kunsthalle Bern (Berne – CH), 2008, solo ; Looks Conceptual, Galeria Vermelho (São Paulo – BR), 2008; Obliteration Series, Blow de la Barra Gallery (London – GB), 2007, solo ; Nothing Boxes (Dark Pop Stacks), The Lift (Madrid – ES), 2007, solo ; Social sculpture, Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago – US), 2007 ; i-20 Gallery, (New York – US), 2006, solo ; NO, Galería de Arte Mexicano (Mexico City – MX), 2006, solo ; Five Text Pieces, Blow de la Barra Gallery (London – GB), 2005, solo ; Off Key, Kunsthalle Bern (Bern – CH), 2005 ; (Misunderstandings), organized by Stefan Brüggemann, Galería de Arte Mexicano (Mexico City – MX), 2005 ; To Be Political It Has To Look Nice, apexart (New York – US), 2003 ; Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Off-site project, Institute of Contemporary Arts (London – GB), 2002, solo ; Sensitive Negotiations, Art Basel Miami (Miami – US), 2002 ; Unproductive, Oficina para Proyectos de Arte (Guadalajara – MX), 2001, solo. The Stefan Brüggemann show (curator : Eva González-Sancho) is a joint project put on by the Frac Bourgogne and the Kunsthalle Bern (Bern – CH). It has been supported by the Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris. The Frac Bourgogne is supported by the Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication (Direction régionale des affaires culturelles de Bourgogne), the Conseil régional de Bourgogne and the Conseil général de la Côte-d’Or. The Frac Bourgogne is a member of << PLATFORM >>.