Raphael Brunk
Raphael Brunk (*1987) studied Political Science, Philosophy and Psychology at University of Koblenz-Landau from 2007 to 2013. Since 2013, he has studied at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with Professor Andreas Gursky and became his master student in 2018. His works have been exhibited internationally, amongst others, Focus Photo LA, Goethe-Institut-Paris, Weltkunstzimmer, Cubus Kunsthalle, Galerie Droste, Schierke Seinecke, Office Impart, Falko Alexander, Artemis Lissabon. His works are part of several collections, amongst others, Kunstmuseum Bonn, McKinsey, Jüdische Gemeinde Frankfurt, multiple family offices and private collections.
Raphael Brunk lives and works in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Link: www.instagram.com/raphaelbrunk
In his working group "Captures", Raphael Brunk does not photograph in the real world, but from within popular computer games. However, he does not do this in the sense of the practice of "in-game photography", which is popular with gamers with an affinity for photography. Instead he has created his own digital hacking tool together with a programmer. With this tool, he can leave the camera perspective defined and preset by the respective avatar (the virtual main character of the game) and take a freely movable camera into the game. This allows him, for example, to move through walls or floors and photograph on the reverse side of the constructed game architecture, beyond the limits of the computer game provided by the game’s developers. He decides on certain points of view and then creates screenshots. For each final photo Brunk decides on, 400 full HD screenshots are combined with another self-programmed digital tool, to create a single image with a high, printable resolution. The final image files are in some cases digitally edited, and finally printed out as lambda prints and finished with a matt surface, using the Diasec process. Traditional photography usually finds closed surfaces in real, 3-dimensional space, each of which is visible as the outer shell of masses, of the living, of substance. Brunk's approach on the contrary shows, among other things, the construction patterns of virtual worlds consisting of pure surfaces and momentary illusions.
Text: Michael Reisch
Raphael Brunk: Capture75011.12_23 96x160cm C-Print (Lightjet) Diasec matt 2016
Raphael Brunk: Capture6723.11_23 130cm x 180cm C-Print (Lightjet) Diasec matt 2016
Raphael Brunk: Capture23330.11_21 100x 160cm 2016 C-Print (Lightjet) Diasec matt 2016
Capture55326.4_19, 180cm x 140cm, C-Print (Lightjet) Diasec matt 2016
New series, 2020:
Raphael Brunk: #3d3d3d, UV-Print on Alucore, 180 x 140cm, 2020
Raphael Brunk: #965b65, UV-Print on Alucore, 180 x 140cm, 2020