Work

OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY JUNE 13TH, 2025 FROM 6-9 PM 

With Slow Burn, Mauren Brodbeck presents an immersive installation at the intersection of the intimate and the collective, where photography becomes a sensitive surface, embodied memory, and a gesture of presence. Conceived as a luminous and intimate escape, the work explores deep connections between the body, desire, and personal transformation.

 The title evokes a slow fire — one that doesn’t blaze but warms, that persists without burning, like an ember enduring over time without fading. This inner fire sets the tone for a radiant, sun-drenched installation built around slowness, softness, and a fully embraced sensuality. Here, light gently caresses, colors whisper, and images — saturated with texture — act as sensory fragments, traces of a fragmented and deeply embodied narrative. The space, envisioned as a large contemporary picnic, becomes a soft terrain for exploring desire, memory, and presence in the world. Through photography, objects, and materials, Mauren Brodbeck weaves a landscape of discreet gestures and skin-deep memories, imbued with sensuality, slowness, and lived freedom.

 The artist draws a poetic thread between femininity, pleasure, and the freedom to be, in a space where sensuality is not a pose but a language. Each photograph, each object, becomes an invitation to slow down, to feel, to reconnect with oneself and with others. Photography acts here as a threshold — a porous territory between the intimate and the collective — where each image becomes a clue within a fractured yet embodied narrative.

 Infused with a sunlit aesthetic inspired by the 1970s, Slow Burn calls forth warmth, joy, and emancipation — still distant from the constraints and censorships of today. Far from spectacular representations of the body, Brodbeck envisions a contemporary Eden — open, inclusive — where art becomes a site of care, attention, and liberation.

Slow Burn is not an escape from the world, but a return to the self — a warm, vibrant breath, like an inner ember that illuminates without ever consuming.

In my practice, I investigate the shifting relationships between our reality and the digital world, exploring how we forge our identities within societal constructs and rupturing our perception of reality to expose unexpected beauty and new perspectives. As a female artist, I am deeply passionate about examining the concept of individual liberty and how it is subsumed into society-imposed mental patterns and daily habits. In my work, I focus on female identity and self identity, intimacy, the human body and self imagery, and creation and destruction – opening up dialogues to access new and unfamiliar territories. I love to explore and play with visual, sonic, and cinematographic codes, manipulate time to stretch out or compress visual and auditory experiences, and use duplication, sampling, and layering of multiple visual and aural components – creating pieces that disrupt societal normalization through the physical senses. (To learn more about my background and artistic process, visit my About page.)

Note on the selected work, read more 

ERASURE

In the series “Erasure,” I investigate how teenagers build their identity in a world where everything seems possible, but having to make their own choices and create identities separate from an adult influence leaves them suspended in an “in-between” state between childhood and adulthood. To create the images, I print large-scale black and white or color photographs and scrape their surfaces with razor blades, removing the pigments and leaving ink dust, cuts, and holes in the paper, deleting some of the distinct elements. The act of erasing is a repetitive and violent gesture that symbolizes the shaping of the mind and identity through our common societal beliefs and how we dismantle them. This action is therefore an aesthetic statement as well as a social one. Afterward, I rephotograph the damaged prints with a medium format camera and use sophisticated digital techniques to color, compose, and re-organize – creating a new final piece out of the deconstruction of the old one. 

I approach this project in two ways – researching identity in the context of society, and exploring the evolution of photography since its invention and subsequent transformation into an immaterial, digital form. Both avenues offer the chance to explore how identity is lost and then re-found through fundamental transformation.

"Interplay, Enmeshment, and Matter" brings together a collection of works that delves more deeply into the concept of the “in-between” state and exploring new photographic territories. In these images, I explore the contrast between being creatures of nature while distancing ourselves from it and our tendency to pay homage to nature’s beauty while also destroying it.

A MOVING IMAGE OF ETERNITY

"A Moving Image of Eternity" combines animation, collage, and digital art. The title references a phrase used by Plato, who explained that the physical world was merely the image of a profound eternal reality. These pieces were created by using long camera exposures to capture a collage “performance.” In other words, the components of the images are moved around during a prolonged camera exposure, resulting in a final image that essentially captures a condensed timelapse of the “performance” in a single image. These performative collages investigate the intimate relationship we can have with nature, plants, poetry, and the contemplative state, and evokes the symbolism of the garden. I use a similar process in a number of my aural pieces, constructing sonic landscapes by using nature sounds, and experimenting with new artistic forms and processes in order to transcend contemporary disciplines and explore new methods of creating and presenting art. This interest in nature and plants is also reflected in my series Loyalland.

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Centered around themes of identity, transformation, limitless potential and reinvention, and exploration of the unknown, I create multimedia installations that combine visuals, lights, and sounds for a full sensory experience. Each installation features immersive elements that dissolve the boundary between the art and viewers, and bringing them in as full participants and co-creators instead of simply “experiencers.”

Based on field recordings of mundane, everyday sounds, each audio track draws on the magic and potential inherent in these familiar noises. Manipulated, sampled, and shaped into new narratives, each track creates an immersive experience inspired by the simple sounds they’re drawn from.

SAUCISSES, USTENSILES & AIR FRAIS

AUdio piece, 28'13 minutes

Commissioned by the Collection and Artistic Journal Octopus for the Salon d'Art ArtGenève 2020, this piece proposes a reflection on our domestic environment. It is made only with sound recordings that the artist recorded while cooking sausages in her kitchen.

PATH TO HEAVEN

AUDIO PIECE, 38 MINUTES

Commissioned by french curator Bénédicte Masseli for an exhibition during the Lyon Biennale 2019, this sound piece is a reflection on the environmental issues in the Amazonia and was created to mirror the pencil and installation work of french artist Arthur Novak.

Prelude to Space Odyssey

music for performance, 4 minutes, 2016

One of five soundscapes created for the performance "Mood Motel" during the exhihition "Mood Motel" at Andata Ritorno, Laboratory of Contemporary Art in Geneva.

JUNGLE KISS

MUSIC FOR PERFORMANCE "BARENAKED", 37 Seconds, 2016

Part of a series of seven soundscapes created for the performance "Barenaked" during the exhihition "Barenaked" at the Auer Photo Foundation in Hermance, Geneva.

Ambient Architecture, 2010

A study of sound, noise and patternS

Limited edition of two vinyl records with five titles