In 1983, Engbrox obtained a baccalauréat specialising in graphic arts. He then decided to start earning as a traditional graphic artist, assistant photographer on set and a light technician. These experiences allowed him to work with Wolfgang Flur from the group Kraftwerk, on photo shoot locations. In 1984, he began to paint. In 1986, he left Düsseldorf to live in Paris. From 1988 to 1991, he was a student at the :fr:École nationale supérieure de la photographie|École nationale supérieure de la photographie, in Arles. There he was a student of :fr:Arnaud Claass|Arnaud Claass, :fr:Christian Milovanoff|Christian Milovanoff and Christian Gattinoni. He also had the opportunity to be Larry Fink’s photographic assistant. From 1999 to 2005 he created and managed with two friends in Paris an independent music label. He also contributed to the writing and the composition of titles with :fr:Sporto Kantes|Sporto Kantes.
Work
The first three works featured in his catalogue are from 1994: Helen, Hotel Aya and Air Disaster 1. These canvases are oil paintings based on images found in small format and poorly printed general press. The artist’s work mainly introduces characters in elaborate and improbable settings. Since 2015 Sylvester Engbrox also creates photographs.
Quotes
‘I paint based on images found in holiday catalogues, television programmes… I have collected large quantities of images to class them according to an invented typology. This part of the work today is through the Internet and my own photographic archives. This completely useless catalogue of a depicted world clarifies nothing: the more images we see, the less we understand. But this ordering, this perpetual comparison of one portrayal with another ends by creating bridges between some of them. Sometimes these confrontations lead to a new image. It is this image, which appeared without me knowing, that I paint. My painting comes from this obsessive filing.’ Sylvester Engbrox, February 2008.
‘When a hard disk fails, a recovery programme is launched to try to save the data. My canvases try to repair a time-space that has been disrupted following a crash, to redefine it, by overlapping what remains: bits of gathered images.’ Sylvester Engbrox, February 2008.
‘His painting is totally representative of our period. Clearly figurative, linked completely to the long pictorial history, without any complex regarding official views, it opens up our imaginative fields. It proves to us, better than long speeches, the amazing vitality of painting which crosses technical evolutions by digesting them greedily.’ Gérard Gamand, Azart magazine, September 2008.
‘From the heart of the proliferating mass of Web images, Sylvester Engbrox picks out those which will allow him, those to which he is sensitive, not to accomplish who knows what desire by deluding it, but to methodically disappoint it by exposing his machinery.’ Jean-Luc Chalumeau, Sylvester Engbrox, exhibition catalogue, 2008.
‘In this way, the artist recognises it. He is only an intermediary, a tool, a machine. It is why he explains nothing in his painting, he suggests nothing, neither eroticism, nor guilt, or suffering. He is only showing. And strictly speaking, it is really a question then of a 'show'.’ Max Torregrossa, Sylvester Engbrox, exhibition catalogue, January 2008.
Exhibitions
2015 : , Paris, Espace Dupin, Group Show
2014 : Ausstrahlung, Paris, Galerie VivoEquidem, Solo Show
2013 : , Paris, Fondation Atelier de Sèvres, Solo Show
