about / biography


The personal project “frameS8” is a photographic artwork Martin Bruckmanns developed taking Super 8 films that he has collected over the years as their point of departure.

In the 1935 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Reproducibility” Walter Benjamin wrote that in a film, close-ups and slow motion reveal things that would otherwise only be perceived in the subconscious. By revealing the optical unconscious, the philosopher compares close-ups and slow motion to psychoanalysis, through which we experience the drives and the unconscious.
Martin Bruckmanns’ series “frameS8” consists of just such isolated close-ups and individual frames, revealing the optical unconscious. Thousands of frames are combined to form a film, where the individual images are no longer perceptible as such; the individual motifs and images subordinate themselves to an overarching whole, and the plot dominates the motif. The individual frames impressively show what the viewers could only vaguely see in the film itself. The optical unconscious is first revealed by the process of selection.

In search of the unconsciously visible, Martin Bruckmanns viewed countless films. In our digital present, this Super 8 material has an unmistakable charm. This is primarily due to the flattering appearance of the films, where everything appears softer and warmer than in a high-resolution video format.
The unmistakable look of the images remains. The discrete charm of Super 8 lies not just in the slightly unfocused and thus friendly images, but also in the melancholy inscribed in them. Martin Bruckmanns found this past age and the melancholy that inheres in it in his photographs, in their colors and haptic structures. From the endless series, he chooses a single frame, moving the scene beyond the moment into the view of the beholder, thus making the optical unconscious emotionally visible. In this way, he adds a microscopic trace of life to the fugacity of film.

Martin Bruckmanns’ analytic gaze on the hidden details in film, the choice of his powerful and yet sensitive motifs, and their subtle fusion, offers the viewer sufficient room for interpretation and reminiscences.

full text available on request in: english / deutsch / italiano
(text by Alexander Freund)


biography



71_3095, Netherland 1992
S8 - selfie







Martin Bruckmanns, born in Cologne, Germany, has been taking photographs since the age of eight, when his parents bought him his first camera, a Kodak Instamatic. From that moment on he never puts down the camera, starts as a self-taught photographer and later also experiments in his own darkroom. After high-school he went to Italy to further his studies at the IED in Turin where he graduated in Visual Communication.
He started to work for some advertising studios first as assistant later as a freelancer for more than two decades.

Currently he focuses more on artistic and fine-art photography developing his own artistic project “frameS8”. His works are in private collections in Germany, Italy and France.

exhibitions

2023 "Ars gratia Artis" Ossimoro Art Gallery, Turin - Italy, coll
2023 "Premio fotografico nazionale Giovanni Gargiolli 2020-2021-2023", Fivizzano (MS) - Italy, coll
2023 "Decontextualising visual memories" frameS8 - exhibition - Abandon-ArtGallery, pers
2023 "Still in Motion III" - Baxton Gallery, Brussels - Belgium, coll
2023 Finity Gallery, Berlin - Germany, coll
2023 Jonathan Schultz Gallery, Miami - USA, coll
2023 Thomson Gallery - Fine Art, Zug - Switzerland, coll
2023 "Dissoul" - YAH-Factory, Young Art Hunters, Milan - Italy, coll
2022 “Diptych & Triptych Art” contest - Artrepreneur, Honorable Mention
2022 "Minimal.Signs and forms of the essential" - Loosenart Gallery, Rome - Italy, coll
2021 "Summer Show" - Fondo Malerba per la Fotografia, Milano - Italy, coll
2021 "Cellular Structures" - Independent Artists, Busto Garolfo (Mi) - Italy, coll
2021 "PH.ocus" About Photography, Paratissima, Turin - Italy, coll
2020 "A60 Contemporary Art Space" international exhibition, Milan - Italy, coll
2020 "Premio fotografico nazionale Giovanni Gargiolli", Fivizzano (MS) - Italy, coll
2019 "Art in the City"- Bottega Baretti, Turin - Italy, pers
2019 "Grenze-Festival Internazionale di Fotografia", Verona - Italy, coll
2019 "Abstract-Opera Astratta" - Independent Artists, Busto Garolfo (Mi) - Italy, coll
2018 "NoPhoto"- Paratissima, Turin - Italy, coll
2018 "FermoImmobile"-Contest winner, Agenzia del Demanio, Rome - Italy
2018 "Danturn a Niquidaj", Niquidetto (TO), Italy, pers
2018 "MemoriesNoMemories", shortlisted with "Russian Memories", Florence - Italy
2017 "Viaggiare per borghi"- Contest winner, Borghi Viaggio Italiano - Italy
2016 "Kunsthalle Czarnetta", Vignale Monferrato (AL) - Italy, col

pubblications

2023 "Mythography III" Trieste Photo Days, pubblication edited by Exhibit Around APS, Trieste - Italy
2022 "femme fragile" - Povzine (ed.#1), webmagazine
2021 "Shots to Tell 04" PhotoProjectPro, pubblication edited by Mino di Vita, Milan - Italy