Georg Brückmann: Kundmanngasse 19
14 October—11 November 2017

Georg Brückmann shows photographs of an interior made up of photographs—the table, bed, chimney, walls, windows, doors and decoration—replicate the furniture in Kundmanngasse 19 in 1920s Vienna.

Margarethe Stonborough Wittgenstein commissioned this prestigious urban villa in 1925, designed in the end by her brother Ludwig Wittgenstein. The Wittgenstein House became a meeting place for Vienna’s intellectuals in the years that followed. Ludwig Wittgenstein had just completed one of his major works, Tractatus logico-philosophicus. Its central concept—the connection between facts, atomic facts, objects, form and logical space—is reflected in the architecture. Brückmann’s work is an unparalleled visual translation of Kundmanngasse 19 as philosophy presented in building form.

In it, all visible items have their original appearance on the surface. He recreated the historic items to scale from their depictions, some as two dimensional backdrops, and some as three-dimensional objects in their real dimensions. Brückmann arranged them in his atelier as a kind of diorama, simulating the contemporary room layout based on old photographs and drawings by Wittgenstein’s sister Hermine. These layouts are represented photographically in Brückmann’s work.

Apparently real in colour, form and dimension, but clearly removed from their function, this method of replication and depiction is clearly a kind of draft. In this way, Brückmann can emphasise the original concept behind this special living space and push back the vivid reality of living. Shell and substance, object and visual paraphrase are interlinked and combine to present the reality of the unreal based on a true model.

This purely conceptual, even philosophical level of perception is enhanced by restricting recognition, or even realisation of the space to a fine line: the components only merge to form a spatial logic from a very specific perspective, on a single visual axis. If we deviate from this axis, our view disintegrates into a chaos of shapes, lines and fragmented images of various objects, rendering it incomprehensible and illogical.

Brückmann’s camera takes this targeted, philosophically ambitious perspective and creates a momentary illusion seeking a foothold between imagination and reconstruction. Or as Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote: ›The world is the totality of facts, not of things‹. ›What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.‹ And, ›An atomic fact is a combination of objects.‹
—By Tina Simon    /Translated by Brendan Bleheen
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Dr. phil. Tina Simon
Author and publicist, Leipzig
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