Micha Brendel

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Micha Brendel (born September 22, 1959 in Weida , GDR) is a German artist. He works with the media of photography , painting , performance , installation , object and text.

biography

From 1980 to 1982 Brendel worked as a volunteer and assistant production designer on television in the GDR . At the same time he completed an evening course in painting and graphics at the Berlin Art College . He then studied from 1982 to 1987 with Professor Günther Hornig at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts , where he founded the performance group " Auto-Perforations-Artists " with Else Gabriel, Rainer Görß and Via Lewandowsky . Between 1984 and 1987 Brendel published the independent original graphic artist magazine "USW" (Andsoweiter) in Dresden. The concept booklets, which were illegally published in an edition of 15 to 25 copies, saw themselves as a forum for predominantly young artists and focused on the documentation of artistic work processes, performances, projects and exhibitions. In 1987 Brendel moved back to Berlin. Since 2012 he has lived and worked in Hohendorf, Brandenburg.

plant

"Planets and Placents" by Micha Brendel in the Museum for Sepulchral Culture Kassel, 2006
Micha Brendel in his performance "Der Mutterseelenalleinering", 1989

Brendel works with different artistic techniques and forms of expression, most of which are based on precise knowledge of scientific experimental procedures. His preparation objects, drawings, photographs, photo overpaintings, installations, books and performances are located at the interface of anatomy , plastic , alchemy , biology , medicine and art . He often uses organic materials like meat, bones, skin, offal, and blood.

The aim of his often provocative, sometimes macabre-seeming and bordering on the comic-grotesque works is to try out interfaces between organic and psyche , matter and spirit. The examination of historical and contemporary conceptions of the world and the body, as well as existential questions about life and death and the associated fears and desires play a role.

In Brendel's early work, self-portrayal and photography are the main strands. The basis for his photo series "Lustschutz" (1984-1988) are distorted images of his face and body by photographic techniques, which Brendel further alienates by adding blood, organic tissue, hair, brain and other indefinable, mostly slimy substances. A further processing of his fleshly portraits and self-portraits can be found in the form of overpainting photos in series such as "Brendel samt Störtebeker" (1989) and "Sitter Studies" (1990), in which, in addition to painting techniques, destructive interventions such as staining and scratching or collaging with skin are used.

Dealing with the subject of the body and the use of highly connoted and symbolically charged organ material are also the focus of the group performances of the "auto-perforation artists". Their methodology based on shock and disgust effects can also be found in his solo performances ("Der Mutterseelenalleinering", 1989).

From 1990 Brendel began to use organic materials for sculptural work. For his specimen objects and "organ depots" he organizes and archives found objects, preserves meat, blood, bones, intestinal skins, animal bodies, entire human organs and various wet and dry specimens. From this constantly expanding fund he not only draws the material for sculptural structures, books, cabinet work and room installations, but also for the experimental further development of his graphic means of expression. In the object "The Park for the Ultimately Reclining" (1995) he invents new names for organs with playful language, which, preserved in glass vessels, he arranged mirror-symmetrically to vessels with humus. In 2005 Brendel arranged 40 differently preserved, colored and shaped human placentas in showcases for "Planets and Placentas".

From the beginning, language and writing play a major role in Brendel's work, as do the medium of the book. Brendel has kept his ideas, sketches and experiences in "Tagwerk books" since the mid-1980s. A "blood book" (1990-1992) described in his own blood or the work "The Great Yellow Emperor's Classic of Animals" (1996) created from animal skins were created as independent works.

Since 2013 he has been increasingly creating text and type works, in which he brings letters and symbols into new relationships with one another and experiments with different carrier materials, writing fluids and writing tools.

Scholarships and Awards (selection)

Public collections (selection)

literature

  • Lutz Fiebig and Jörg Sperling (eds.): Micha Brendel: From the secrets of nature. Edition Fiebig, Berlin 1998, ISBN 978-3930516193
  • Central Institute and Museum for Sepulchral Culture (Ed.): Micha Brendel: "one layer deeper". Wounds and wonders in bodies. Working group cemetery and memorial, Kassel 2006, ISBN 978-3924447328
  • Lutz Teutloff (Hrsg.): The outer innermost - Micha Brendel, two series: "Brendel and Störtebecker" / "Sitter studies". Modern Art, Bielefeld 1991
  • University of Fine Arts Dresden (ed.): Order through disturbance - auto-perforation artistry. Catalog on the occasion of the exhibition in the Oktogon. Verlag für Moderne Kunst , Nuremberg 2006, ISBN 978-3938821473
  • Christoph Tannert (Ed.): Autoperforationsartistik. In connection with the exhibition "Notice the Difference" in the Kunsthalle Nürnberg. Verlag für Moderne Kunst, Nuremberg 1991, ISBN 978-3928342018
  • Kunsthalle Nürnberg (Ed.): Notice the difference. Micha Brendel, Peter Dittmer, Else Gabriel, Rainer Görß, Jörg Herold, Via Lewandowsky, Durs Grünbein. Verlag für Moderne Kunst, Nuremberg 1991, ISBN 978-3928342001
  • Käthe Wenzel : Artistic body experiments in the GDR. In: Käthe Wenzel (Hrsg.): Meat as a material: Objects at the interface of art and medicine. Weißensee-Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89998-056-5 , pp. 12-40

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Brendel, Micha
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German artist
DATE OF BIRTH September 22, 1959
PLACE OF BIRTH Weida , GDR