Glory Days (TBM, KS, PML, PCP, HARS) (2022)
Digital animation
01:30
2022

Jump (2023)
Digital animation
02:55
2023

Squeeze (2023)
Digital Animation
05:30
2023

Whipping Boy - Drowning (2023)
Digital animation
02:30
2023

Roses for Pepe (2022)
Digital animation
01:00
2022

Christian Bronstein

Christian Bronstein is a contemporary artist from a diverse international background who grew up between Germany and the UK. Influenced by Berlinde de Bruyckere, Francis Bacon, Ivana Bašić, Robert Gober and Asger Carlsen, he abstracts, fragments, and reconfigures the body. Exploring the body through the lens of new materialism, he primarily creates digital works during his investigation and questioning of social and cultural norms based on Kristeva’s work on abjection.

Born in 1991 in Germany, he studied at the Glasgow School of Art where he received his MFA in 2023, the London College of Fashion and the University of Warwick. He won the Cordwainers Datuk Jimmy Choo MA Award during his time on the MA Fashion Artefact at the London College of Fashion in 2020/21 for the craftsmanship of his digital work and was shortlisted for the Procter & Gamble Better Lives MSc/MA Award in the same year for his master’s thesis that focused on mental health and the consumption of luxury fashion items.

His sculptural fashion works were selected for the LCFBA19 press catwalk show, where he was one of the only two individuals selected to represent the Graduate Diploma in Fashion Design Technology course for the press on the catwalk.

I predominantly create high-definition digital artefacts and animations that focus on exploring the use of abjection as a new material practice.

This collection of works is the culmination of a two-year autoethnographic exploration of the origins of post-AIDS gay millennial shame. Put simply, it examined how the AIDS epidemic created an unsavoury image of gay men in the minds of the people that oversaw raising the millennial generation, which was corroborated by an extensive analysis of the role of the UK press in presenting and positioning gay men as a threat to society.

The resulting shame, revulsion and other negative emotions surrounding the experience of growing up as a young gay man in an environment where my existence was deemed to be abject is explored in the work using the fragmented body and figural forms. I utilise the materiality of the body with the intention of sharing the emotions of growing up gay whilst simultaneously subverting cultural ideals through the positive use of abjection with the aim to create works that act as ‘social agents’, hoping that they will aid in fostering empathy and conversation between individuals.