Max Bruinsma, in contrast to Rudi Laermans, has decided to emphasise aestheticism. The connotations of logos, especially those of large American multinationals, are for him the very raison d’être for the creation of his visual poetics, a poetry that finds a profound resonance in our western culture. The visual, typographical stature of logos such as those of IBM, LEGO, Google, et al., in its poetic connotation is liberated from the meanings of the word. When Bruinsma and the Strange Attractors replace IBM for the word GOD, set in the same typeface, Bruinsma believes the image suggests the phrase ‘The commander of life’.

Bruimsa gives the primacy of communication to the image. There is poetry to be found here, the representation of which escapes us. In this manner, Bruinsma and the Strange Attractors present us with visual evidence of god’s existence. For them, it’s not about denotation, the indisputable meaning of it, but more about connotation, the timbre. The god-like, that remains indescribable for us and suggests a certain imagination, is visual rhetoric, or rather visual poetry. Herewith Bruinsma presents not only visual evidence of god’s existence but a western-slanted proof of god’s existence. His burden of proof is simply cloaked in the clothes of a multinational. As we already know, these clothes are not always acceptable on every street.

The Strange Attractors have taken up Bruinsma’s argument by producing a pamphlet in the form of a poster with a visual side and a text side. On the visual side, we find the logos, along with some poetic captions. A nice detail is the inclusion of the names of the colours used, not in PMS language but names like Divine Red, Divine Green, etc. On the text side, we find a more detailed contextualisation of the pamphlet.

Text:

Max Bruinsma, www.maxbruinsma.nl

Design:

Strange Attractors, www.strangeattractors.com

(Catelijne van Middelkoop en Ryan Pescatore Frisk)