The spatial experience of language and text lies at the centre of Bruno Nagel’s work, not spoken language but language as text or text components whose meaning unfolds through spatial experience.
Experience is only communicable on a linguistic level, its movement conceivable only in physical space. Yet, in order to communicate the essence of this experience, any kind of lingual and spatial means has to be abandoned - thus giving rise to a paradox. In this creative act, a new language and a new space emerge. Nagel’s installation in the ‘Ehegraben’ takes reference to it’s own linguistic character and draws the physical space tight against the linguistic space.
"Behind space, so it will appear, nothing more is given to which it could be traced back. Before space there is no retreat to something else." Martin Heidegger
The ‘Ehegraben’s’ entrance threshold marks the starting point. Limited by the physical narrowness of the space, Nagel’s typographically precise concept-graffiti condenses into serially arranged signposts through the dark tunnel. Traversal of the corridor is inextricable from the direction of our vision. The sight reconstructs space and distance. The eye reads the font and opens the view to the invisible, to the unreadable.
In space, the world of the viewer and Nagel’s installation flow together and combine. Set like coordinates, the four words FETT SALZ ZUCKER SEX define the space as medium and instrument whose only function is the mental movement and journey in space itself. A different inner space emerges depending on the point of departure. All four substances, however, have one thing in common - their consumption can release endorphins into the body, stimulating our brain and creating a feeling of happiness.
In the courtyard, eight massive beams guide the eye upwards: vertical placeholders of power and its pursuit. In an associative manner, ‘The more we know’ visualises the accumulation of information and unquestioned power.
Bruno Nagel lives and works in Berlin. He was awarded a special show at this year’s ‘art KARLSRUHE’.