A new exhibition by Mexican artist Stefan Brüggemann at Gathering’s new Ibiza location is a symbol of the island’s new, flourishing art scene
Winding through the rolling hills of Ibiza by car, Stefan Brüggemann’s house can be seen from afar like a mirage. With an exterior clad entirely in silver foil, and a living room finished in gold leaf, the brutalist house – designed by Alberto Kalach – is an astonishing total work of art. Every detail has been meticulously thought through and no expense spared, from the silken, chalky lanes of 3,000 rare Eremophila nivea plants in the garden (which Brüggemann designed himself), a circular, hidden swimming pool, poetry subtly inscribed on the walls (there are slogans like “ideology is over” and “this must be the place”, which are read out over the stereo by American rock star Iggy Pop), and an outdoor pavilion designed to showcase just one of the artist’s paintings. Even a functional air vent, located on the drive, is finished in silver foil, the sparkling fronds rippling delicately in the wind.
And just like the Mexican conceptual artist’s work, which utilises text, spray paint, neon light signs, gold leaf, wood and marble, the house is indulgent yet ascetic; brazen in intent but delicately finished. “I usually work very fast – when I start a work I finish it that day – and this project was the opposite,” says Brüggemann, who now splits his time between Ibiza, London, and Mexico City. “The garden takes a lot of time. You cannot manipulate the growth of plants. This project put me in a different mindset, which was very challenging.”
We are here at Brüggemann’s house for dinner to celebrate his new exhibition at Gathering Ibiza, which pairs his pieces with several by the legendary (and now 82-year-old artist) Bruce Nauman, which are on loan from private collections. Despite being decades apart, the two artists have much in common; a shared interest in language, humour, mixed media, and conceptual art. “Bruce is also an artist that touched lots of areas – sculpture, sound, performance – but he didn’t touch painting,” says Brüggemann, who is wearing an old Joy Division T-shirt and a green cap from Idea emblazoned with the word “acid” on it at the show’s opening. “I also challenge the idea of painting. I don’t paint in a nostalgic way. I’m using inkjet prints, digital mediums, spray paint, wood, aluminium and gold leaf to make the work feel like it’s something that could’ve been done today.”
Titled Painting Not Painting, the works in the show are punk, provocative, and rife for interpretation. There’s wordplay and humour; one text-based canvas by Brüggemann reads, “I know how to satisfy my wife in bed. Get out of the bed”; another from Nauman pairs “ah” and “ha” side by side, exposing them as palindromes. Brüggemann pokes fun at the futility of interpreting art; one piece, an appropriated cartoon strip stencilled repetitively across the canvas, depicts a man pointing at an abstract expressionist canvas, saying, “Ha ha, what does this represent?” The canvas then points back at him, and says, “What do you represent?” Speaking on this work, Brüggemann says, “This cartoon represents a lot of what my work does. It’s not commanding any preaching – it’s more a generator of doubt. It’s posing an existential question. The work represents what you think it represents. It’s a mirror, and I like that.”
The materiality of Brüggemann’s work may be more lush and opulent than Nauman’s – there’s a slab of marble slashed with spray paint, hypnotic blurs of gold leaf, and wood finished in deep, dark black paint, all by Brüggemann – but there’s a curiosity and conceptual edge that binds the pair together. “Looking at the show, people have asked which are Bruce’s works and which are Stefan’s works,” says Alex Flick, the founder of Gathering (many of the Nauman works are on loan from his father, Friedrich Christian Flick, a German mega-collector). “For me, that’s already an indicator of a successful dual show, when they harmoniously coexist.” Brüggemann, who is represented by blue-chip mega gallery Hauser & Wirth, simply says: “Bruce and I are provoking each other.”
Ibiza, a small Spanish island on the Mediterranean sea, is more well-known for its raucous nightlife scene than its artistic credentials, but tentative change is afoot; Brüggemann’s show opens during CAN Art Fair Ibiza (launched in 2022, the contemporary art fair still retains the island’s easygoing spirit, with its opening hours only in the evenings, loud music blaring, and cocktails on tap). Gathering’s founder, Alex Flick, who launched his gallery first in London in 2022, and Ibiza in 2024, has been visiting the island nearly every summer for two decades, and like the three million other tourists it lures in per year, he was bewitched by the place’s laidback charm. While spending time with his daughter Mira on the island during the pandemic, he began to think of opening a gallery there. “I realised that in Ibiza, you had all these different, really wonderful aspects,” says Flick. “I love the nature here, the restaurants are amazing, the nightclubs are world famous. In Covid, people were doing more remote working and spending a lot more time here. So the gallery was really born out of necessity; not only did they [the residents of Ibiza] want it or need it, but they also deserved that cultural offering.”
Located on a quiet side street in Sant Miquel de Balansat, a quaint, traditional village in the northeast of Ibiza, Flick wanted to create a space that served the island’s actual residents (most of whom live in the north), not tourists. The addition of a restaurant, named after his daughter Mira, was added to help integrate the space into the local community, and to make the gallery a destination spot (“spend some time with the art, have a meal, then go back to the art, keep looking,” he says). A former takeout restaurant, the bright white gallery space, with its double-height mezzanine, looks just as polished as other renowned galleries around the world. “I love the idea of people just walking into this village and stumbling across the gallery,” says Flick. “And then you enter into it, and I hope that you get the impression inside that you could be in any art capital mega city. You’re transported.”
In London, Gathering’s programme has been steadily gaining acclaim for its ambitious group shows, which have included the work of renowned artists like Cindy Sherman, Claes Oldenburg, Paul Thek, and Louise Bourgeois. It also represents contemporary artists like Wynnie Mynerva, Emanuel de Carvalho and the Turner prize-winning Tai Shani. The gallery itself – and its name – was a response to the pandemic. “I felt very lonely during Covid,” says Flick. “The name came from the idea of bringing people together. It was also about bringing ideas together, bringing different nationalities together, bringing different practices together. In its essence, the gallery is a forum of possibilities and people in art.”
Painting Not Painting by Stefan Brüggemann and Bruce Nauman is on show at Gathering in Ibiza until 1 September 2024.
