ABOUT

Simona Brinkmann's work hinges on a sense of paradox. Her practice, which spans a range of media including sculpture, sound, video and installation, is ideas-driven but also often rooted in the aesthetic qualities of the materials used. At its heart is a nervousness about value, meaning, significance (including the work’s own) and a kind of doubt about the authenticity of perceptual experience.

LIFE SIZED (2005) is a three-dimensional zero made out of mirrored perspex. The work is ‘life sized’ in a literal sense, because it uses Brinkmann’s own body measurements as a starting point (at 163cm, it is exactly the same height as her). DOUBLEZERO (2006) is a further development on this theme, a piece whose subtitle could quite simply be ‘naught plus naught is still naught’. Both works are deceptively simple. They appear as bold, affirmative sculptures celebrating the iconography of numbers. Yet, they also stand for abject nothingness, and dismantle/dematerialise themselves as objects by taking in their surroundings through their reflective surfaces. Viewer, architecture and context are therefore immediately implicated in the sense of void generated by the work.

Works often appear to undermine their own premise. Rather than staging open antagonisms, they are based on a dynamic of conflict that primarily manifests itself from within. Recently this approach has been short-circuited with a skewed take on the aesthetics and themes of Western Americana.

GHOST HERD (2004-2010) is a surround sound installation in which a herd of bison stampedes the gallery space from one end to the other. At irregular intervals, the space resounds with the deep rumble of animal hooves. The sound swells up, moves through the building and dies away, making the herd of bison a spatial - albeit invisible - reality.  

FORTH WORTH (2007-) is a pile of leather-covered sandbags arranged to form an obstruction or fortification. This is an ongoing piece, which is meant to be shown again and again over a long period of time. Each time it is exhibited more sandbags are added, until – conceivably – the work might one day come to engulf its surroundings. Some incarnations of Fort Worth have also operated as interventions in the exhibition space, by blocking off part of the space and forcing viewers to navigate around it.

CANYON (2010-2011) is a series of faux brick sections, all of which are foam-padded, covered in black leather and intended to be shown as fragmented, pseudo-modular wall pieces. While the title of the series alludes to a mythology of sublime, epic open spaces available to be imagined, explored and conquered, the work, with its allusions to such diverse reference points as the built environment, minimalist formalism, padded cells and eroticised automotive interiors, invites a conflicting array of interpretations.

Simona Brinkmann was born in Milan and lives and works in London. She studied first at Middlesex University, then at Central St Martins College of Art and Design, graduating from the latter with an MA in Fine Art in 2006. She has exhibited both in the UK and internationally, including at: Maria Stenfors, London; Zabludowicz Collection, London, and MOT International, London; Netwerk Centrum Voor Hedendaagse Kunst, Aalst, Belgium, Marc dePuechredon, Basel and the ((audience)) festival of surround sound art which toured to New York, Syracuse and Toronto in 2009/2010. Her work has been represented at international art fairs such as Art Athina in Athens (2008), the Volta Show in Basel (2009) and the Supermarket Art Fair in Stockholm (2010). Recent Shows include Regard Matrixiels at Treignac Project, France (2011) and Vessel, Plymouth (2011). She was awarded the Clifford Chance Sculpture Award in 2007 and is currently the recipient of an AA2A placement at Kingston University.