Levin Stettler Brogli

About

I am an artist, alchemist and myth-maker. I believe that ambiguity is seductive. When I am pulled towards a thing while simultaneously being repulsed by it, I am left in this weird in-between state that holds magic.

My installations are portals that beckon my audience into unknown realms. The idea of magic is so appealing to me because it is a self-determined form of spirituality; we do not have to call upon the divine, it is inside and around us and can be bent to our will. That is where we get invited to play around with forces that we are usually powerless against. Through the performance of rituals, we bring to life fantastical stories that can help us overcome the preconceived notion that we are merely bystanders of a definite reality that is not to be altered. When we are confronted with the mystical, the occult or however we call what is hidden, we start questioning the illusions that we thought of as absolute and find more.

I glue, merge and mingle creatures out of latex and mixed material such as bronze, wool, wax, glass, bark, bones, stones, soft drinks, skin shedding, hair, dough and trash. I am obsessed with altering textures and tearing open surfaces. I treasure creatures, since they can overcome qualities that are inherently human, such as gender, pain, love, lust, loathing, longing, mortality and trauma. They are neither good nor evil, neither male nor female, neither body nor soul — but stuck in an in-between world. In the tradition of sorcerers and alchemists, I summon these creatures as as guides through a place of nuances. The playful appeal of the figures evokes a sense of childlike curiosity, which can easily deceive the viewers from seeing them for what they really are: plotters, schemers, demons — but after all also mirrors. I long for tales yet to be told, for creatures that neither embrace nor subvert their archetype, no monsters, no anti-monsters, but faceted portrayals of creatures who are both powerless and powerful, both devourer and devoured; or perhaps neither.

I have never known the difference between rapture and rupture. I use them synonymously, as if the sky could open up for me, instead of me. Closures always frustrated me, because no matter how deep the gash, another layer of skin always grew over it. A bit thicker and of slightly different texture, but after all still human skin. I did not know back then, but I wished there was a way to open up the surface, forcefully. Not my surface, but that of all things. I wished I could have ripped the earth open, the way I tore my skin. I hated that my body kept healing if I wasn’t ready for that. I hated that the order of things did not stop, despite all my efforts.

Did I not tell you that the patterns on my skin do not stop there? There are veins in my flesh and veins in the ground. There is meat on my bones and meat in those greased boxes on concrete on Victorian brick on Roman brick; all eternally rotting. The first couple times I merely scratched the surface of my skin. It feels wrong to go in that deep, but I got used to it pretty quickly. My skin is a palimpsest just like the yellow wall at the underpass near my apartment, whose mural says „believe in yourself“ in cursive letters. The „self“ ends next to a mirrored half globe, as if I could look into it and manifest that for myself. The shapes that peak from underneath the yellow varnish suggest there must have been something other there, perhaps something more profound.  

My body is an archive of everything that I have left behind. There are marks all over my body, but no openings. My left arm holds thirteen ancient scars covered by the word „learning“ in black letters that faded to blue and my right arm holds the Seven Deadly Sins, like a checklist.  The skin underneath my right eye holds the word „charlatan“ in mirrored letters and my left cheek holds the Ouroboros who mantles an ancient Egyptian transcript saying  „all is one“.

I know that there is no inside and out. Because everything that is in is also outside and everything that is out is also inside. So I put everything that was inside out and everything that was outside in. I am a collector of things – and people. A bottle. Whenever someone leaves me they leave a part of themselves inside of me, I hope. I am standing on an edge. Chicken bones and human bones all washed ashore the Thames, all oxidized and blackened, almost fossilised, all the same. All in my white plastic bag that says „Have a nice day :)“ in red. I have to take everything I can get with me.

I always wanted to find a way to merge my body with others, one to open up the borders between us. If only I had known that no recipe is needed for such a thing, it just occurs. The voice in my headphones sings: „One of these days the sky is going to rain, so why are you crying?“ As if there was a bigger body holding my little one tightly. As if microcosm mirrored macrocosm, or was it the other way around? As if the sky could cry for me, instead of me. As if you could cry for me, instead of me.