Jakob Brugge, Real Objects for Phantom People
at Gauli Zitter (April 19 - May 31, 2025)
at Gauli Zitter (April 19 - May 31, 2025)
A flag once used to signal illness from ship to shore, now decorates birthday parties. High heels, originally worn by Persian cavalry and later by European aristocrats like Louis XIV to assert power and status, have evolved into emblems of femininity and symbols for pin-up girls. A tiki torch, once brought home by American WWII soldiers from the South Pacific, now lights backyard barbecues, yet that same flickering glow takes on new meaning when carried in neo-nazi marches. In Real Objects for Phantom People, Jakob Brugge explores the unstable semiotics of commonplace objects, each carrying a peculiar history that shifts between specific to the generic, or from benign to ominous, and back again.
Installation view of Jakob Brugge, Real Objects for Phantom People, Gauli Zitter, Brussels. Courtesy of the artist and Gauli Zitter.
Brugge's first solo exhibition at Gauli Zitter in Brussels unfolds across two dialogic parts: on the left, a group of molds neatly arranged side by side, some leaning against the wall; on the right, what seem to be their possible casts, with objects such as T-shirts, boat shoes and baseball caps loosely arranged in transparent plastic boxes. At first glance, the exhibition suggests a direct relationship: mold and cast, negative and positive, tool and product. But this impression is misleading – there is no indexical relationship between the two groups. Some forms and colors align, but many do not; the assumed castings are not uniformly derived from the molds, and neither group consistently precedes the other. Instead, they exist as autonomous sculptures, presented as a visual proposition that subtly disrupts and undermines our reflex for logic and organisation.
An intriguing tension emerges between repetition and variation, as some casts appear to be direct derivatives of their molds, suggesting seriality, while others diverge entirely, emphasizing their singularity. It raises reflection on what makes an object susceptible to reproduction, and whether the ease of its repetition might alter or dilute its meaning. Within this unstable framework, color occupies an ambivalent role: at times affirming formal continuity, at others interrupting it. Rather than signaling stable individuality, identity surfaces through a shifting logic of resemblance and difference, where these opposing forces coexist without ever settling into a fixed order.
Installation view of Jakob Brugge, Real Objects for Phantom People, Gauli Zitter, Brussels. Courtesy of the artist and Gauli Zitter.
The cast objects are housed within transparent boxes that mimic the aesthetics of bargain bins, sites of accidental disorder and commercial failure. Items appear discarded rather than placed, presented without hierarchy, devalued despite having never been used. The use of rubber reinforces their deflated status. Their limp, unstable presence resists permanence and fixed meanings. Stripped of branding and drained of commercial allure, these monochrome forms evoke a dry wit that plays on the gap between their cultural familiarity and their current state of material detachment. Yet the transparent boxes act as framing devices, providing structure and accommodation. This architectural enclosure gives the randomness an intention: the haphazard nature of the composition is here defined and delineated.
This conflict between containment and ambiguity extends into Play Your Part (2025), where Brugge engages with the mold of a fence, not as a literal barrier, but as a sculptural inquiry. Once basic markers of territory, fences have become quiet symbols of social division in suburban life. By leaning the negative form against the wall, the artist strips it of its original function and reimagines it as a contemplative structure. As Brugge explains, "If [the fence] is represented in positive, that becomes explicit because you're standing in front of it and you can either be inside or outside. But to represent it in negative does something else: suddenly your physical relationship to it changes. It becomes the occupiable space as opposed to the space that it demarcates.” The work challenges the binary of inside and outside, prompting questions such as: how do we distinguish a group of people, and how do we create space for each of them?
Installation view of Jakob Brugge, Real Objects for Phantom People, Gauli Zitter, Brussels. Courtesy of the artist and Gauli Zitter.
In Real Objects for Phantom People, Brugge uses the process of molding and casting not to replicate, but to reinvent. The sculptural process becomes a metaphor for the shaping and repetition of identities, which gradually erode into abstraction as familiar forms are reimagined as contemporary archetypes. Rather than erasing their historical context, he holds them open to new ideological projections and re-interpretations. The result is a promising debut, with Brugge pushing material and semiotics to their limits, only to let them slump and quietly deflate under the weight of their own significance.
By Pieter-Jan De Paepe