PhotoBrussels Festival
23 January - 23 February 2025

Frédérick Mouraux Gallery is happy to participate to the 9th edition of the PhotoBrussels Festival with the works of art by artist Jörg Bräuer.

PhotoBrussels Festival , created in 2016 at the initiative of Hangar by Delphine Dumont, is the essential photography event in Brussels. The festival offers visitors an exhibition tour in various cultural venues, galleries, museums and art institutes.

Fab Rideti © Fab Rideti - Frédérick Mouraux Gallery

With “IM / PERMANENCE”, his new series, Jörg Bräuer opens up to the philosophical question of continuous change over time. Impermanence is a philosophical concept addressed by various religions and philosophies. In Eastern philosophy, it is present for its role in the three Buddhist foundations of existence. In Greek philosophy, it appears for the first time in the writings of Heraclitus and his doctrine of “Panta rhei” (everything flows). Impermanence means “everything changes and nothing lasts forever”. Everything, from our emotions to our thoughts and feelings, from melted glacier ice flowing into the ocean, from light to the plants that surround us, is constantly changing and decomposing.  Nevertheless, the notion of space and time remains relative to each individual existence, because it depends on how we experience this constant flux.

Bräuer raises the question of to what extent he can influence his inner time by changing his perception, including a sense of infinity that transcends human life. He uses the camera as an instrument to frame a particular moment in time and make it permanent. According to Heidegger, existence needs both reality and the abstract to be complete. In this respect, Bräuer completes the duality of his realities with poetic textworks drawn from his impressions.

In October 2024 the artist established himself at the foot of Europe’s largest glacier, the Vatnajökull, in southeast Iceland, to explore the raw, rugged landscapes and the connection with nature’s most essential elements: minerals, water, ice, fire and air in the face of time. He works the dynamics of space in an almost abstract composition as minimalist volumes in metamorphosis. Contrasting tones and the natural interplay of elemental forms constitute his visual language in photography.

Bräuer employs a manual emulsification process to create his photographic media, utilising natural fibre papers. This technique endows the resulting prints with a distinctive quality, characterised by the imprint of the brush, the irregularities of its passage and the texture of the paper. Subsequently, he employs a combination of traditional darkroom techniques and contemporary photographic methods to create limited-edition prints in his studios in Brussels and South Charente.

The project has been published as a limited edition artist’s book, comprising photography and textworks created by the artist.