Thorsten Brinkmann

Book excerpt: Thorsten Brinkmann (*1971 in Herne) happens on the ingredients for his sculptures, photographs, and site-specific installations at dumps, materials that have been abandoned by civilization. Commonplace and bizarre materials are piled up to form pedestals and sculptures, or they are transformed into cabinets of wonders. The artist even uses his own body as an objet trouvé. For his photo series Portraits of a Serial Collector Brinkmann puts on found articles of clothing and stages himself in a setting that is likewise made of found objects. He is a juggler who places equal value on mundane things and introduces them to art in the spirit of Marcel Duchamp. This richly illustrated volume presents the first complete overview of Thorsten Brinkmann's oeuvre, an artist whose combinations of objects playfully make us conscious of the interface between the familiar and the unexpected, between the imaginable and the never-before-imagined.