Marc Brandenburg at the Berlinische Gallery

says Marc Brandenburg as we walk through his exhibition – 20th Century Debris at the Berlinische Galerie. The magical nanny who swoops in with her umbrella to care for the neglected children of the wealthy, work-obsessed Banks family teaches them to prioritise love and joy over money and rigidity. She features in a video by the Berlin artist. While the metaphor is difficult to reconcile with Brandenburg’s artistic journey, it feels fitting in a personal way. He repeatedly mentions friends at the center of his works – some still close, others estranged – as we move through the exhibition, suggesting a care for the people and memories woven into his pencil drawings, which he began in the 1990s.

In his soft-flowing camouflage suit and the so-Berlin Jutebeutel – an old-school type without branding or signage – he does not offer neatly packaged explanations of his work. This does not seem to stem from an inability to describe or share insight, but rather from the difficulty of articulating deeply personal relationships – where does one begin to unpack something that is, by nature, non-linear? This feeling runs through the entire exhibition for me, and it suggests that if the impetus for art-making comes from within – from an urgency to express – then idea of presentation and mediation becomes a secondary task.

Since the early 1990s, a core of his visual references has been his immediate surroundings – his home, friends, and culturally significant moments and figures. Through the process of drawing, photo snapshots are translated into monochromatic, intricate works on paper, creating a sense of distance. Images appear as dreamlike remembrances, with fading edges, close-ups and angles that evoke a feeling more than a fixed object. Working predominantly in small formats, Brandenburg explains that he never had a studio; he worked wherever he happened to be, and thus scale remained adaptable and portable.

What stands out in the presentation of these works – loaned from private and corporate collections – is their arrangement into thematic groupings. The soft transitions between seemingly random objects and explicit, intimate moments create a rhythm that feels particularly honest.

Another layer of distance – or an obscuring of source material that holds both joy and pain – lies in Brandenburg’s use of inversion. By working with the reversal of light and dark values, and rendering everything in pencil greyscale, light and shadow effectively become the drawing lines – a shift that adds a poetic layer, transforming fragments of personal life into an archive of its time.

The 1990s in Berlin were marked by flux – a recently unified city suspended between past and future. Optimism coexisted with fear of loss, shaping the mood of the era. New opportunities, new ways of expression, and a booming subculture emerged. Brandenburg was born in 1965 in West Berlin. He spent part of his early childhood in the USA before returning in 1977, where he was influenced by punk and the city’s subcultural characteristics.

The inversion of images extends into a room illuminated by black light, presenting videos and montages. Works from the early 2000s to the present expand his focus from the domestic and intimate towards a more outward-looking social commentary on capitalism, the body and consumerism. There is a sense of confronting the dreams of a new era being sold – dreams not available to everyone. Perhaps there is even relief in remaining outside the mainstream, which so often confers legitimacy through self-consumption. Instead, it seems to be more like an awakening from a bad trip – a return to awareness that, while balance is harder to maintain at the fringes, the dance is remains better.

The final room offers a surprise – a giant cut-out figure pasted high on the wall, forcing us to tilt our heads upwards. Suspended, the figure reclines with ease, half-naked, tattooed, and comfortable with himself. It feels like a lighter chapter of Brandenburg’s artistic journey – playful and clear. The tattoos function as artworks, temporal drawings that act as distilled anchors of what has come before. Although the installation appears somewhat abrupt, it remains a tender moment of happiness  for the exhibition.

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Marc Brandenburg – 20th Century Debris

17.4.26 – 14.9.26
Berlinische Gallerie