Marc Brandenburg’s spectral cityscapes reframe the debris of contemporary life.
21 April 2026
Brandenburg’s ‘20th Century Debris’ unfolds as a meditation on the afterimage of modernity, where the ordinary is rendered uncanny through acts of inversion and erasure. Long embedded in Berlin’s cultural fabric, Brandenburg turns to the city not as subject but as residue, filtering its surfaces through a meticulous process of photographic translation and tonal reversal.
Working primarily in pencil, his drawings begin with the camera’s fleeting capture before dissolving into negative impressions that unsettle the stability of vision. Light becomes shadow, detail becomes atmosphere, and narrative recedes into a quiet, persistent unease. The exhibition gathers around 150 works, spanning early drawings from the 1990s to recent pieces, alongside video, photography, and tattoo editions that extend his visual language across mediums.
Pop culture fragments, bodies in motion, and urban detritus surface and submerge within this shifting archive, indexing a world shaped by excess, consumption, and latent crisis. Brandenburg’s practice resists spectacle, instead lingering in the margins where meaning flickers. What emerges is not a portrait of the metropolis, but a haunting imprint of its psychic and material remains.
This exhibition is on view at Berlinische Galerie, Berlin until 14 September 2026.
