Simon Grant interviews Stefan Brüggemann
TATE Etc. Issue 16 / Summer 2009

CONCEPTUAL DECORATION (BLACK ON SILVER)
Stefan Brüggemann
2009 
Courtesy of the artist
Wallpaper silver and black, font: Arial Black 10pts

Stefan Brüggemann on Conceptual Decoration

I’m working with language and come out of the traditional of conceptual art – but at the same time I’m trying to put in crisis the idea of what is conceptual. I like this conflict between what is visual and what is mental, so I came upon the notion of conceptual decoration, of using wallpaper. 

Wallpaper is the most banal material for something visual. Or it’s a less art respected material. It plays that game that it’s the most vulgar or the most decorative form of decoration.

I made a wallpaper of silver with black text that reads ‘Conceptual Decoration’ repeated as a pattern. When you see it closely you recognise this as a text and then it becomes an idea. Though when you see it from a distance it just becomes a surface, it looks grey. However the more silver the colour, the more industrially mass produced it looks.

The repetition of things and you know this constant multiplication of things, becomes too much. I like the rhythm that this silver and black combination creates. It flickers. It looks straightforward but it has an aggressiveness to it. As John Peel said: ‘It is always different, always the same.’