Dan Bruggeman

“When we concentrate on a material object, whatever its situation, the very act of attention may lead to our involuntary sinking into the history of that object.”

— Vladimir Nabakov – Transparent Things

A walk along a stretch of ocean took an unexpected turn as I stumbled around a curve and onto a beach cove that, from a distance, glittered brilliantly with a sweeping spectrum of color. Azure and cerulean blues, crimson and vermilion reds, lemon and saffron yellows! Propelled by the excitement and uncertainty of my discovery, I approached. The vibrant tableau took a strange twist as I drew near and realized that what had appeared to be luminous, jewel-like fragments turned into thousands of discarded plastic remnants, washed ashore.

Still, exquisitely colored, these broken bits of children’s toys, eating utensils and drinking vessels were transformed into what they truly are: an environmental disaster and a representation of our carelessness as stewards of nature.

But they were undeniably beautiful…

And as I thought about them, I couldn’t help but think about their own history. They had belonged to someone and shared a form of human intimacy. A child’s toy, outgrown, a clothes-hanger that echoed the rounding of a shoulder, combs and barrettes that fashioned a hairstyle. Had they been watching, they may know more about us than we, them.

Inanimate, vast and poetic, I collected bags full of them.

These objects emerged as the subject of my current work because I found, in their suspended state of being, a new kind of landscape. These plastic bits are representations of a phenomenon so large that it becomes impossible for the human mind to grasp. They become what Timothy Morton calls hyperobjects.*

Crumbling ice-caps, rising oceans and mega-storms are hyperobjects too. Because of their scale, they disrupt the idea that landscape, as an artistic subject, claims a status of background to the foreground of human narrative. When I encounter a beach covered in plastic, I know that the rest of the ocean is filled with plastic too. This daunting fact, while impossible to fully visualize, offers a new pictorial narrative. This new landscape becomes the foreground.

As weather patterns change, as plastic fills our oceans, as arable land diminishes, artists must adapt too.

*Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, Timothy Morton, University of Minnesota Press, 2013

Dan Bruggeman, Senior Lecturer in Art
University of Nebraska, Kearney, BFA; Hunter College, MFA

Dan Bruggeman teaches observational and figure drawing. His own work reflects an interest in the portrayal of natures complexity and the challenge of presenting a whole comprised of parts belonging to different dimensions. Dan has recently exhibited his paintings and dioramas at Groveland Gallery in Minneapolis and at Bridgewater, Lustberg, Blumenfeld Gallery in New York. His work can be found in public and private collections including the Minnesota Historical Society. He has also received McKnight, NEA, and Minnesota State Arts Board fellowships.