Artist:
Stefan Brüggemann (Born 1975 in Mexico City, Mexico; lives and works in London, England and Mexico City, Mexico).

Materials:
Mixed media installation.

Description:
“Stefan Brüggemann—facing up to the intimidating challenge of showing in Barcelona’s Mies van der Rohe Pavilion—follows the famous maxims less is more and the God is in the details. In order to extol the virtues of the architecture, he has chosen an approach as minimalist as it is radical: replacing the three windows of the principle façade with reflective surfaces. With this choice, the artist revisits the relationship between darkness and transparency in architecture by simultaneously shattering the structure of the façade and rendering it more concrete. The artist accomplishes this separation by blocking light inside the building and rejecting the outdoor light.  He enacts a new spatial experiment that turns upside down the notion of free circulation as well as the aesthetic and philosophical principles at the heart of this architecture.”
—Laurent Fiévet, Press release: “The World Trapped in the Self (Windows for Mirrors),” Lab’Bel website.

“When the World looks in the mirror does it see perfection? It may not be blind to its perfection, but perfection is boring. The World’s perfection is its final delusion: man has designed another world richer and more complete than this world and this new one, like the first, is already burning up under the sun. Through Stefan Brüggemann’s simple material alterations to Barcelona’s Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, our gaze is held, captivated, by its own image—like a metaphor for this contemporary world.

“The sociologist Bruno Latour deemed that we were never modern, but Brüggemann pushes us to be hypermodern.  We must march to the rhythm of our time.”
—Silvia Guerra, Press release: “The World Trapped in the Self (Windows for Mirrors),” Lab’Bel website.