1977 born in Schwedt/Oder, Germany
1999-2004 study of painting, graphic and other artificul medias at Academy of Fine Arts Dresden, Germany
2004-2006 further studies at prof. Ralf Kerbach at Academy of Fine Arts Dresden, Germany
lives and works in Berlin, Germany
Prizes/grants
2008 prize „woodcut today“, Stiftung Kunst, Kultur und Bildung der Kreissparkasse Ludwigsburg, Germany
2007 Arras-Prize for art and culture in Dresden
2006 Grant by the Free State of Saxony
2005 Marion-Ermer-Prize
2004 price for graphic by Volksbank Chemnitz 1st step; Hegenbarth-Fellowship
Solo exhibitions (selection)
2010 02/11 Folkwang Museum Essen, Germany; 11/10 Leonhardi-Museum Dresden, Germany
2009 »Gehäuse« galerie baer, Dresden, Germany
2008 »Block print«, Kunstverein Friedrichshafen, Germany; »Sommerloch«, SOX Berlin; »Hinterland«, Museum Junge Kunst, Frankfurt/Oder, Germany; »In Farbe«, Galerie VOUS ETES ICI, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2007 »Bilder im Mittelgang«, Galerie Pankow, Berlin, Germany (C); »unter dem Pflaster, da liegt der strand«, Städtisches Kunstmuseum Spendhaus Reutlingen, Germany (C); »wo wir wohnten«, Goetheinstitut Rotterdam, Netherlands; »Schöne Häuser«, Dresden, Germany
2006 »Marion-Ermer prize winner«, Academy of Fine Arts Dresden, Germany (C); »Hegenbarth-Stipendiaten«, Senatssaal at Academy of Fine Arts Dresden, Germany;
»hinter fassaden«, galerie baer, Dresden, Germany
2005 »das Haus, der Stuhl, die Wurst«, association for original etching, Munich, Germany
2004 »Wohnkomplexe«, Galerie für Junge Kunst, Dresden, Germany
Participations (selection)
2010 6/10 »Das versprochene Land«, Residenzstadt Dresden, Germany; »Schnittstelle Druck«, HGB Leipzig und Museum für Bildende Künste Leipzig, Germany; »mainly on papers«, Galerie Vous et lci Amsterdam, Netherlands; »Amnesie«, Kunsthalle Faust, Hannover; Galerie Maurits van de Laar, Den Haag, Netherlands; Fred Rapid Glassworks, Zerofold Köln/Autocenter Berli, Germany (C)
2009 »Epilog«, Galerie für Junge Kunst, Dresden, Germany; »All about...Dresden«, whiteBOX e.V., München, Germany; »Nichtorte. Orte. Sammlungsausstellung 2009«, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, Germany; »Ohne uns«, Motorenhalle, Dresden, Germany; »Amnesie«, Kunstverein, Leipzig, Germany; »Erinnerungsland. The land of memories«, Galerie BWA, Zielona Góra, Poland; »Listen to your eyes«, Galerie für zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, Germany
2008 »Cent«, Galerie Defrost, Paris, France; »woodcut competition 2008«, Louis-Bührer-Saal of the Kreissparkasse Ludwigsburg, Foundation for Art, Culture and Education of the Kreissparkasse Ludwigsburg, Germany; »Zeitblick (Time Perspective). Acquisitions of the Federal Republic of Germany´s Contemporary Art Collection, 1998-2008«, The Federal Government Commissioner for Culture, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Germany (C); »Beautiful new world«, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V., Stuttgart, Germany; »Schöne neue Welt«, ifa-Galerie Stuttgart; »Von Munch bis Beckmann, von Jorn bis Gertsch. 100 Jahre Holzschnitt«, Kunsthalle Emden; »Hedendaagse houtsneden«, Galerie Maurits van de Laar, Den Haag, Netherlands; »Stadtansichten«, Galerie Netuschil, Darmstadt, Germany; »Schöne neue Welt«, ifa-Galerie Berlin; »Grauzone«, galerie holzhauer Hamburg
2007 »Wenn der Sonnentau …«, acquisition of The Kunstfonds (Art Fund) Saxony, Residenzschloss, Dresden, Germany; »Tokio Hotel«, Ostrale, Dresden, Germany; »I can only see things when I move.«, The Kupferstich-Kabinett Dresden (collections of prints, drawings and photgraphs), Germany (C); »soziale Einheit«, Freunde aktueller Kunst, Zwickau, Germany (C); »place makers 2007«, project space curators without borders, Berlin, Germany; »setting up home«, BWA Galerie Wroclaw, Poland and Motorenhalle Dresden, Germany (C); »Abwesenheitsnotizen«, Museum X, Mönchengladbach, Germany
2006 »TinaB – Contemporary Art Exibition«, Prague, Czech Republic; »cross the line», Galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf, Germany; »Bild/Skulptur», Galerie Jette Rudolph, Berlin, Germany; »das haben wir alles selbst empfunden«, Delikatessenhaus Leipzig, Germany; »heile Welt», Sammlung Schmidt-Drenhaus at The Kupferstich-Kabinett (collections of prints, drawings and photgraphs), Dresden, Germany; »soziale Einheit», galerie baer, Dresden, Germany; »zamieszkanie/sich einrichten«, BWA Galllery of Contemporary Art, Wroclaw, Poland
2005 »profile«, galerie baer, Dresden, Germany; »boofe l.e.«, Delikatessenhaus, Leipzig, Germany
2004 »100 sächsische Grafiken«, Chemnitz/Dresden; »Lichter«, Dresden, Germany
2003 »ARBEITEN«, Senatssaal der Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden, Germany; »100 sächsische Grafiken«, Chemnitz/Dresden, Germany; »14 Tage«, Dresden, Germany
2002 »Das Bild«, Galerie am Kietz, Schwedt/Oder, Germany
Art fairs
2008 Art Cologne, Show off Paris, Preview Berlin
2007 Scope New York, Art Cologne, Preview Berlin, Scope Miami
2006 Art Rotterdam, Art Chicago, Preview Berlin, Art Cologne, Scope Miami
2005 Art Rotterdam, Art Frankfurt, Art Forum Berlin
purchase by
Sammlung Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig
Kunstfonds Saxony (Art Fund)
Ostsächsische Sparkasse
Deutsche Bundesbank
Städtische Galerie Dresden
Kupferstich-Kabinett Dresden
Holzschnittmuseum Spendhaus Reutlingen
Sammlung zeitgenössische Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
Museum Junge Kunst Frankfurt/Oder
Unternehmensgruppe Theo Müller GmbH
Volksbank Chemnitz
The collection of the Galerie Neue Meister (New Masters Gallery)
Forum of Contemporary History Leipzig
Bibliography
Kunsthalle whiteBOX (publisher): All about ... Dresden; Unterföhring 2009
Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft (ver.di)/department 8 (media, art and industry) (publisher): Art+Culture (cultural and political journal); p. 2; edition No. 3, Oktober/November 2008; Berlin 2008
Kunsthalle Emden, Nils Ohlsen and Katharina Henkel by order of the Stiftung Henri und Eske Nannen und Schenkung Otto van de Loo (publisher): Stege, Grate, Inseln – Holzschnitte von Edvard Munch bis heute, Heidelberg 2008, ISBN: 978-3-86828-008-1, p. 80, p. 135
Kunstverein Leipzig (Hsg): hub, Nr. 4, Leipzig 2008, ISBN: 978-3-980971-59-1, p. 42f.
ifa –Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V. (publisher): Schöne neue Welt, catalog, Stuttgart 2008
Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden, Christian Sery/Rektor (publisher): ReVISION – Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden 1990-2007, Altenburg 2007, ISBN: 978-3-910109-65-0, p. 250
Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (publisher): I can only see things when I move; catalog; Munich, Berlin 2007
Kulturamt Pankow von Berlin (publisher): Jan Brokof – Bilder im Mittelgang; Galerie Pankow, catalog; Berlin 2007
Städtisches Kunstmuseum Spendhaus Reutlingen (publisher): Jan Brokof – unter dem Pflaster, da liegt der Strand; catalog; Altenburg 2007, ISBN: 3-933820-87-1
BWA Wroclaw (publisher): Zamieszkanie/sich einrichten/inhabiting; catalog, Wroclaw 2007, ISBN: 978-83-89308-18-4
Schulz, Edgar (publisher): Jan Brokof – unter dem Pflaster liegt der Strand; in: RT.-ART-Quartal; Reutlingen 2007; p. 8f.
Freunde Aktueller Kunst e.V. (publisher): Brühlette Royale – Die Zeitung zum Projekt, Zwickau 2007
Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (publisher): Heile Welt; catalog; Kerber-Verlag Leipzig 2006, ISBN: 3-938025-71-9, p. 102-103, p. 120
Prague Art Future (publisher): tina b. – The Prague Contemporary Art Festival, Prag 2006, ISBN: 80-239-7164-6
galerie baer (publisher): Jan Brokof , catalog; Dresden 2006
Marion Ermer Stiftung zur Förderung von Kunst und Kultur in Sachsen und Thüringen (publisher): Jan Brokof – Wohnkomplexe; catalog; Dresden 2005, ISBN: 3-936104-54-9
Stiftung Kunst, Kultur und Bildung der Kreissparkasse Ludwigsburg (publisher): Holzschnitt Heute – Kunstpreis 2005; Ludwigsburg 2005; p. 26f.
Neue Sächsische Galerie (publisher): 100 Sächsische Grafiken 2004 – Holzdrucke, catalog; Chemnitz 2004, ISBN: 3-937176-02-0
Even though artist Jan Brokof increasingly works with installations, he is primarily a graphic artist whose preferred techniques include pencil, etching, tusche and especially woodcuts. Jan Brokof portrays people, animals, plants, the in- and outside of homes and interiors. Combined, these objects merge into somewhat laconic but also subtle visual worlds whose origins may indeed be found in the artist’s experiences and life. The works betray something of the mnemonic moments and biographic events. By reflecting, reducing some and concentrating on other details, the artist also mediates general situations, topics of social awareness such as the loss of identity and belonging, problems of integration and of dealing with the past, uniformity and the debasement of urban life.
For the exhibition “hinter fassaden” Jan Brokof takes a look behind the façade of a new building in Schwedt (a woodcut installation of ca. 530 x 450 cm which he showed as his diploma piece) and rebuilds one of the rooms to scale. Eighties’ pop icons form the decoration on one of the wall’s of this teenage room; woodcut-magazine posters give a feeling of the then-way of life. The view from the window however diminishes the viewer’s temporal distance and points towards anonymity and urban sterility.
Jan Brokof follows his own artistic paths. At the same time, he knows that art cannot draw inspiration only from life, inner emotions, or outside experiences, but must also always refer to itself and develop from an imitatio artis. This means that exploring older works of art or questioning one’s own artistic, material, and technical prerequisites always play a significant role in the development of new art. In this tug of war between creating something new and free of preconditions and reflecting the past, Jan Brokof has found his own original approach.
Brokof has a preference for artworks on and with paper and for combining these with other artistic materials. Since his studies at the Dresden University of Visual Arts, Brokof has focused in particular on woodcutting, black-ink painting, and graphite and coloured pencil drawings. His works are thus rooted in tradition. He records things he his seen, thought, or felt in a small sketchbook, which serves as a rich source of motifs and inspiration for later use. It is upon these that his – one could almost say classical – small and larger-format works on paper are based. But in the way he handles the medium of woodcutting, in particular, Brokof makes clear that his understanding of the graphic arts goes far beyond what is traditionally associated with the term. Indeed, he uses this traditional printing method to create novel three-dimensional, room-sized sculptural contexts, installing large-scale paper collages and building reliefs and objects whose massive cores are covered with woodcuts.
To date, Brokof has dealt in his works primarily with memories of his youth in the industrial city of Schwedt and impressions from his day-to-day life. These include recollections of the grey and dismal-looking tower blocks and industrial plants of his hometown, of his childhood bedroom with its window views of an anonymous urban landscape, and of direct personal experiences. Everything around him is of interest and can provide material for his art: a glance at his girlfriend, his acquaintances and friends, his worktable, his favourite music group, poster ads, the old woman going shopping. Time and again, Brokof focuses in his works on everyday activities like taking a bath or hanging out with friends in the evening or late into the night. Important, too, are very private experiences, such as headaches that accompany changes in weather, or sexual feelings and stimulation.
Brokof’s visualised fragments of experience, his creative notations of feelings, are frequently executed in graphite or coloured pencil and using an associative pictorial language that is sometimes reminiscent of caricature in its exaggeration and can appear unfamiliar in its surrealism. Sex Pistols, for instance, employs humour and allusions to the principle of comic strips to relate a very personal story, although it remains unclear whether the artist actually experienced what is told. Images of campsites, trips to pop concerts, and compulsory military service come to mind. During these narrative episodes, sexual innuendos become particularly apparent in Brokof’s work, such as when the branches in a dense row of trees behind a tent reveal themselves to be erect penises, or in dreamlike scenes showing a group of hills with a vagina-like entrance inhabited by a phallic form that also resembles a pin cushion or a cactus.
In their artistic design, these drawings are also more complex than the black-ink paintings that Brokof has completed to date. The characteristic lines of the pencils used by the artist are considerably more variable. Brokof employs stippling, hatching, and line-and-wash techniques, proving himself to a graphic artist and colourist of exceptional subtlety – a characteristic he has eschewed thus far in his ink paintings and woodcuts.
Alongside these works so full of innuendos and sometimes difficult to decipher are drawings, ink paintings, and woodcuts that explore architectural forms, houses, and building complexes. Here, programmatic questions appear to play a more significant role and reveal the fundamental design principles in Brokof’s oeuvre.
In his ink paintings, Brokof works above all with the succinct contrast between black and white. Broad black strokes, solid black areas, and an intermediate gray tone of thinned black ink to indicate shadows are employed in an almost primitivist manner. In turn, the white of the paper ground often serves as an effective contrast.
A hallmark of Brokof’s ink paintings is their serial quality and the way they play with different visual realities. Brokof employs an entire repertoire of building forms, much like movable pieces of scenery. Some of these works show succinct, two-dimensional views of buildings, their windows appearing as tall rectangles of casually unpainted blank white space. At times, the areas on one side are more compressed than on the others, creating an optical illusion that makes the viewer automatically attempt to discern a shortening of perspective. Skylines filled with high-rise buildings in every shape and form are also frequent themes in these works. These show completely different ways of realistic depiction and starkly varied visual states of aggregation, ranging from comparatively precise and subtle representations to simple grids with dabs of ink. Sometimes we see a pattern that looks as if it had been formed by a perforated metal plate placed awkwardly on the sheet of paper, but which is undoubtedly a variation of the high-rise motif. In other cases, different high-rise buildings are layered on top of one another like the scenery in a theatre, or they are designed as three-dimensional, sculpture-like cubes attached to the paper itself. And yet other works show high-rises that look as if they, pushed back into the depths of the picture, were standing in a wasteland of cement with the black streaks of streets converging upon them.
A frequently recurring building type in this group of works is the ‘pyramid house’ – a small cube-shaped structure, often with only one window on each side and with a steep pyramid-shaped roof. Sometimes these buildings are shown standing by themselves or in a row like bathing cabins behind a paling fence; others are painted from a bird’s-eye view and, with their extreme contrasts of light and dark, look as if they had been drenched in the bright artificial light of a film studio. In fact, the light in many of Brokof’s ink paintings has a similarly artificial quality to it.
Other works show only a simple diamond-shaped pattern that evokes the bathing cabins – very much as if we were looking down at their roofs from above during the night. In several paintings, Brokof plays with the contrast between finely detailed window façades and diffuse and blotchy patterns, endowing the works with a surprisingly informal, almost abstract and expressive air.
Overall, it is the geometry of repeated motifs and the play with different modes of expression that dominate in these works. Grids and lattices transition seamlessly into window façades and then back again into ornamental patterns, allowing the message conveyed by the pictures to oscillate between mimesis and abstract symbolism.
Atmosphere plays a relatively straightforward role in these works and arises through the use of a simple black background that gives the impression of a night-time scene or simple bright backgrounds that are suggestive of daylight. Sometimes Brokof modifies these almost overly simple atmospheres by adding clouds, which look like black smoke billowing from factory chimneys and convey a sense of foreboding. Looking at this group of works as a whole reveals that many of them have a muted, almost melancholy quality.
In some of his works, Brokof not only varies his motifs and oscillates, in terms of content, between symbolism and realism. He also employs fragmentation and a layering of visual themes. The latter technique is similar to the effect produced by opening multiple files on a computer and is typical of a visual world that shows evidence of a confrontation with today’s new media. However, at the same time, Brokof consciously opposes a stylised visual language. If we compare his artistic approach and his treatment of visual materials to those of other artists of his generation, we can see that he avoids any creative path that might lead to cyberspace-like spatial constructs, based as these are in the visual language of many computer games.
Instead, Brokof’s drawings, ink paintings, and, above all, his woodcuts are characterised by something conspicuously naive, craftsman-like, and simple, which underscores the expressive qualities inherent in the materials he uses. Although Brokof is clearly not interested in any particular kind of sophistication, it could be asserted that it is precisely his avoidance of sophistication that endows his works with refinement and subtlety. The artist strives to maintain a childlike directness in his art, calling to mind the Art Brut of Jean Dubuffet. By consistently relying on his own spontaneity, Brokof provides an argument against slick virtuosity and elegantly ossified attitudes towards style. He performs a balancing act, alternating between calculated expectations and a spontaneous openness to meaning – one important reason why his works have an anti-academic quality to them.
Often Brokof’s ink paintings are executed almost casually – the contours are unsteady, the ink inexactly mixed – as if they had been churned out quickly and without any stylistic intention. Stray splatterings of paint and clear traces of the working process ensure that the viewer remains aware of how these works were produced. And with regard to the woodcuts, it is unlikely that a professional printer would approve of the way they have been printed. But Brokof’s chief interest is not to print pure, even colours by using cleanly inked blocks, but rather to create an expressive and impulsive effect. Often we can see the grain of the wood used for printing – an effect first introduced to the art of woodcutting by Edvard Munch. And like Munch’s woodcuts, Brokof’s works are clearly self-referential: they not only depict something, but also thematise the technique upon which they are based.
By using age-old techniques such as ink painting and woodcutting, Brokof consciously distances himself from the mass culture of the present day, including the slick design of computer-generated art. In today’s art world, this adds an anarchistic aspect to his work.
Brokof first gained attention with his thesis project, a more than 5-metre high and 4.5-metre wide woodcut tableau. It shows a front view of an East German tower-block and functions as an unframed wall object. Brokof himself refers to this creation, comprised as it is of numerous individually printed sheets, as well as to the recent, similarly structured works, as ‘installations’, thus expressing his intention to introduce a new dimension of form and meaning to the art of woodcutting. This tower-block façade is part of a long-term project entitled P2, which refers to a specific type of prefabricated building in East Germany. In an essay on the artist, his background, and his approach, Susanne Altmann explains that the modules of the building in this major work correspond to the individual segments of the woodcut. Interestingly, the parts that show individual motifs were printed first – in particular, areas showing stereotypical indications of personal elements such as curtains or flowerpots. Subsequently, the artist cut out these sections from the wooden plate – a type of ‘lost form’ technique – and printed the uniform surfaces of the walls using the same block of wood.
Works like Wohnhaus mit Fabrik (‘Tower Block With Factory’, 2005) or the wide-format woodcut mounted on MDF Engelsstraße 19-29 (‘19-29 Engels Street’, 2005) are also part of this context. Brokof’s most elaborate woodcut/installation to date is his Jugendzimmer (‘Childhood Bedroom’, 2005). Here, the wooden walls, the bed, the wall cupboard and bookcase, and even the plant pot, cassette recorder, and the cassettes themselves have been made from wood boards covered with woodcuts, creating a three-dimensional, walk-in room installation 2.62 x 3.10 x 3.68 metres in size. The woodcuts provide the neutral and bare room with its own identity and tell the story of a childhood that is representative of that experienced by many people in the Eastern Bloc countries. The overall impression is one of profound melancholy. We discern the printed spines of the books, the large flower patterns on the bedspread, and the posters on the wall. And through the two-part window, we can see a backdrop of high-rise buildings, which are also represented by means of a woodcut.
For Brokof, woodcutting has become a medium that goes far beyond the two-dimensional artistic product. He sees woodcuts as the embodiment of image laboratories, which he assembles into sculptural test facilities according the modular principle of design. Brokof has developed nothing less than a system based on components such as small woodcut sheets, planimetric objects, layered two-dimensional, and fully three-dimensional bodies. A major work in this context is Prachtstraße [Boulevard], which alludes to the wide socialist boulevards in the former Eastern Bloc countries and shows a U-shaped high-rise complex traversed by a street depicted in perspective.
In this work we also encounter another of the artist’s design principles, which also applies, in different way, to his black-ink paintings: the play with proportions and the alternation between close-up and distant views. If we only see a photo of the object Prachtstraße, for example, we cannot tell whether it is a very small or a very large work. The change of perspectives and the varying distance of the viewer to the object are important to Brokof. He thus employs exaggerated foreshortening, like that used in Prachtstraße, to draw the viewer even more effectively into the depths of the image. By evoking this illusion of depth, by exaggeratedly narrowing the line of the street, Brokof alludes playfully to the backdrops of the Renaissance stage, in which extreme foreshortening was used to create the impression of rooms that extended much farther back than the actual depth of the stage. In his ink paintings, the artist alternates between extremely long-distance views and page-filling panoramas, only in his next work literally to zoom in on minute details.
Time and again, it becomes clear that Brokof intends to thwart the viewer’s visual expectations in his installations. Although the link to reality is always present, it is often blurred and emptied of meaning. Looking, for example, at the works of Thomas Demand, who takes the opposite approach, makes this principle easier to understand. Demand creates perfect reproductions of rooms and locations and then photographs them, making it difficult for the viewer to distinguish between illusion and reality. Only upon closer inspection do we generally recognise that what we thought was real is actually a skilful reproduction. In contrast, Brokof makes the artificiality of his representations clear from the very start, thus imbuing them with an almost symbolic quality.
This ‘mediated’ understanding of reality becomes easier to comprehend if we compare Brokof’s three-dimensional objects and installations with the works, for example, of the Polish artist Robert Kusmirowski, born in 1974. Kusmirowski’s reconstructions transport the viewer into nostalgic and, at the same time, anachronistic visual worlds. Kusmirowski’s objects, all of which look more or less authentic, ultimately undermine the myth of the readymade, which was introduced in the early twentieth century by Marcel Duchamp and later continued by Andy Warhol. Kusmirowski creates his works out of cheap materials and subjects them to an artificial aging process – a patination marked by an obsession with details. In this manner, he creates prints, documents, objects, spaces, and complex actions, that refer to historical events or places and transfer the issues related to them into the present day – very much like Brokof when he alludes to his own biography and examines whether an event from long ago is still relevant to the here and now.
But whereas Kusmirowski’s works can be confused with reality, no one would ever entertain the idea that Brokof’s installations were actual spaces or rooms. There is no quality of authenticity to Brokof’s works. Instead, they function like scenes on a stage: looking at them helps us recall the reality of the past. Brokof translates the act of remembering into an art form in which the past is always clearly the past. He achieves this, for example, through the dominance of the printing technique, which is designed to cause a constant sense of alienation when looking at his works. The view from the window of his Childhood Bedroom is a good example, for it is clearly meant to be recognised as a woodcut that has been glued onto the wall. The same can be said of the three-dimensional high-rise cubes, which are reminiscent of enormous toys from a long-lost childhood spent dreaming of building real things. The woodcuts in these installations are like graphic reproduction metaphors for things that are potentially buildable. Nevertheless, they could never be confused with scale models of tower blocks.
Although Brokof’s treatment of woodcutting as a medium is unusual today, his technique and his formats hark back to the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Indeed, in his own unique way, Brokof is continuing the development of the genre, which in Germany can be traced through to the artists of the Dresdner Brücke and then on to Georg Baselitz, Matthias Mansen, or A.R. Penck.
Of the classical printmaking methods, the woodcut technique is the oldest. In Central Europe, the earliest extant woodcuts can be dated back to approximately 1400 AD. At the time, a special form of woodcut called the broadsheet was developed. These were individual sheets of paper printed on one-side; most of the images were religious in nature, but secular motifs, such as those for playing cards, were by no means unheard of. The earliest woodcuts were plain and simple – a particularly revealing fact in the context of Jan Brokof’s work. Their almost primitive form ensured that the printed motifs were easily intelligible. Today, their awkwardness comes across as refreshing and new. We can clearly see that we are looking at what was then a revolutionary new medium whose expressive possibilities were still being explored. Alongside letterpress printing, these woodcuts were among the earliest forms of mass communication and were directed at a broader public that had little money to spend on works of art. Interestingly, people at the time also pinned these woodcuts on their walls or glued them onto the tops of small boxes and inside caskets. And with regard to Brokof, whose works give the impression that the artist is not particularly interested in developing his own polished, personal style, it should be remembered that woodcuts from the late Middle Ages draw their strength from their anonymity.
The sometimes enormous formats used by Brokof are reminiscent of the enormous woodcuts of the Italian Renaissance, such as Jacopo da Barbari’s bird’s-eye view of Venice (1500) or Submersion of the Pharaoh (1549) designed by Titian and carved by Domenico delle Greche on behalf of the Venetian artist.
An even more pertinent example is Albrecht Dürer. With his woodcut series Apocalypse from 1498, he was not only the first person to bring woodcutting into the realm of high art. He also revolutionised the possibilities of the medium with his work, beginning in 1512, on two grandiose woodcut projects commissioned by Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I: the Triumphal Arch, a 3.5-meter wide triumphal arch on paper consisting of 192 woodblocks and the Triumphs of Maximilian, which has 147 sequential woodcuts that add up to almost fifty-seven metres. Like Dürer, Brokof navigates the fine line between representing content and formulating an architectural utopia.
Moreover, with the consciously unrefined and striking manner in which he uses his artistic tools and materials, Brokof clearly continues a late-nineteenth-century development that, for some time, was considered a hallmark of modern art. The expressionists, for example, were keen on distinguishing their works from the slick visual reproductions typical of photography – a genre that claimed the realm of objective documentation for itself. As a result, they preferred roughly carved blocks that called attention to the woodcutting process. Brokof’s personal style in this regard is also very pronounced.
Added to this is the fact that Brokof regards graphic prints as a rare artistic products rather than mass-produced goods like those of Friedensreich Hundertwasser or Joan Miró, to name two extreme examples. In contrast, Brokof’s woodcuts are one-of-a-kind or limited edition pieces. It is almost as if their rarity increased their value, and although they appear lacking in sophistication, they are by no means a social, easily consumed medium along the lines of ‘art for all’. Brokof’s works are unwieldy and require that their audience be receptive and willing to examine them in detail.
In working with the medium of paper, Jan Brokof has discovered a new and untrodden path, but is unafraid to admit that he using it to cross familiar terrain. Indeed, it is precisely his play with this knowledge that opens up entirely new dimensions in the field of graphic arts.
East German concrete slab architecture recently experienced
a renaissance as a theme in contemporary art – a renaissance
that came as something of a surprise to all those who once
saw such residential buildings as the epitome of prescribed
uniformity and architectural unimaginativeness. All of a
sudden, whole hosts of artists and theorists are working over
this phenomenon – in the context of impending demolition
and dramatic urban shrinking in »underdeveloped« regions,
but also as part of a differentiated assessment of the longunrecognized
legacy of Bauhaus and International Style.
Jan Brokof’s long-term project P2 is thus perfectly in tune
with current issues, P2 being the name given to the type
of concrete slab building that characterized the face of
his native Schwedt, a town on the Polish border. Much as
it may appear part of this latest trend, however, Brokof’s
artistic analysis also rejects it – for several reasons.
One of these lies in his personal roots: born in Schwedt in
1977, Jan Brokof spent most of his childhood and teenage
years in a new housing development that was built in the
1970s as part of the development of a showcase re?nery
commissioned in East Germany at the time. After reuni?cation,
the region underwent a process of structural change
that is certainly typical of socio-economic upheavals in the former East Germany. But Brokof does not make these
changes the easily digested theme of P2. On the contrary,
he sticks closely and meticulously to biographic detail,
surveying and literally measuring his own past, leaving
any critical interpretation to us, his viewers. Moreover,
Jan Brokof has chosen an unusual medium – woodcuts.
In this way, he establishes a highly original tension between
his contemporary subject (which, logically enough,
frequently alludes to the formal idiom of Modernism) and
the traditional connotations of the printing technique.
Here, the artist used the »lost cut« technique where
details that are no longer needed are removed from the
original plate. The grey tones of the individual concrete
surfaces were created in several steps – each specially
mixed out of transparent white and black pigments. A
customized, essentially unrepeatable process. In any
case, the small print run represents an irreversible decision.
As a result, an installation like the one recreating
the artrist’s teenage bedroom becomes just as much of a
unique work as any comparable assemblage of material.
This room is nothing less than a journey in time in condensed
form. The possession of the teenager Jan B. who
once lived here have already been obsolete for much longer:
clippings and posters from various pop fanzines watched
over him as he slept. The reproduction of this material departs
from the prede?ned order of the architectural detail.
Strangely, the woodcut conveys upon this evidence of short-lived hypes an aura of constancy – an effect that has been
tested in various media since the invention of Pop Art.
In Jan Brokof’s drawings that are produced for quantity,
the moment of »woodcut-like-ness« stands for a strategic
abbreviation of information, with sketch-like splinters
combining to form a kaleidoscope, it too often shaking out
impressions of childhood and adolescence. Sometimes,
snapshots from the period serve as a source of inspiration,
in other cases the idea for the picture develops during the
drawing process. In his most recent picture objects, however,
the artist is not prepared to accept the gradual obliteration
of the printing block, experimenting instead with wooden
boards that are no longer printed. Although these supports
consisting of ordinary plywood have the same layered structure
as the printing plate, they emancipate themselves from it
like deliberately unpolished intarsia. But for all their independence,
they refer to the printing process and to the unwieldy
visual idiom of the woodcut – and to the fact that Jan Brokof
is unlikely to lose his fascination with either this technique or
this theme anytime soon.
(Text by Susanne Altmann)