The reappropriation of the past can conform into a creative manner, or in a way so as to freeze a conservative tradition. Transcultural discourse is open to both possibilities, as one can see in the ephemeral cultures of Las Vegas and Hollywood in the US, or in Brazil with its staging of colonial and neo-colonial architecture - while also maintaining a democratic-driven character. Parallel to reappropriation, less as staging, yet much more for its movement or anti-classic potentiality, it opens artistic possibilities to the ephemeral and the fragmented, and its building of layers and levels interconnected in a complex way.
I would like to start by briefly introducing the discourses on trasnhistorical and transcultural Neo-Baroque. In her works on Neo-Baroque, the art and movie historian Angela Ndalianis comparey the mediatic and entertaining culture of the 20th and 21st centuries with historical Baroque of the 17th century. In this context, it is important to understand that it is not only about a comparison of styles, but it concerns a transhistorical and transcultural approach - which can be applied to the works of Martin Brausewetter. In a paraphrasis of Focillon, she defines this transhistorical and transcultural Baroque, in which the Baroque form shows its dynamics and its constant presence throughout the centuries - sometimes with more, and sometimes with less intensity. Such phases of intensity eruptions are the most interest and intriguing ones. in this context, two concepts are predominantly linked to Neo-Baroque transcultrual concept: the teatrum mundi and the curiosity cabinet  (Wunderkammer). the epistemological interest in the Neo-Baroque paradigm leads to the reflection to te aspect the the relevance and te efficacy of the concept of Baroque, which was post factum developed on the second half of the 19th century - against a certain kind of "high brow", and mainly based in the experience of contemporary culture of entertainment, as a re-appearing phenomenon. This Baroque created a fascination (Faszinosum) both in cultural discourse and practice. A hypothesis, to which Walter Moser refers in his theoretical analyses on Neo-Baroque, suggests that Baroque was conceived as rethorical and aesthetical efficacy (puissance). Also updated and in different media, such concept has been used in different  social, economical, technical and political contexts. These constructions can be used in th analysis of visual arts in modern and contemporary culture of entertainment, and allow one to understand the realization of the potential, of the efficacy, and aesthetic of Baroque. When considering the political aspect of such an approach of a Neo-Baroque aesthetics, it is possible to understand it as a "democratic Baroque" that breaks the hierarchical levels between low and high brow culture. Finally, it radicalizes transcultural mobility in a globalized paradigm. Thus, Neo-Baroque, in its transmedialization, recycles Baroque, its production of efficacy and in its topoi into a contemporary mass culture. Teatrum mundi nd curiosity cabinet were related to it for this very reason, and contribute to a theoretical debate on reality, virtuality, simulacrum and spectacle.
In her analyses of the entertainment culture and its architecture of similar effects and structures of those of the curiosity cabinets of the 16th and 17th centuries, Ndalianis demonstrates the parallels of discourse and practice between the historical and the contemporary.  Mainly in interior spaces, different fragments of the whole world evoque such aspects and take part in this illusion, and so creatr a source of sensorial immersion. Like the curiosity cabinet of te first modern period, macrocosm is depicted in mycrocosm.
Therefore, sensorial experience is key to the interpretation of Neo-Baroque spaces with its technology and, literally, spectacular miracles. Multiple perspectives, gaze axes, and sensorial experiences multiply the special experience that Descartes referred to in his Discours de la Métode while defining the term admiration.The spectator goes to an intelectual sphere when evaluating his miraculous, almost mystical, experience. Each leap in visual observation takes him/her to a change or to a new step of sensorial perception – when his/her position is modified in a continuous process to evoque other alternated miraculous experiences. Such process well demonstrates the virtuosity of te artist and th architect in the centrality of te spectator's performance.
Brausewetter paintings can be seen from a transhistorical and transcultural Neo-Baroque point-of-view. In tem, he builds an archaeology of Baroque itself and of Neo-Baroque. The issue is less the stylistic references, and more the work with fragments, and with the palimpsest. The shapes and colours reveal themselves to the gaze from various perspectives. The process of scraping The dark surface of the canvas may be connectec to its playful and consumer-like aspect.  Like the images of toys or bank account passwords that can only be revealed by scraping a given surface, Brausewetter discovers layers of colours, lines and shapes.  His work is presented as an unfinished surface, as process. It thus aligns itself to the process of the construction of Neo-Baroque of continution – of the evocation of the miraculous that combines the artist's virtuosity with the performance of the spectator.  Palimpsest means the remains of an ancient manuscript that has been scraped, so that the parchment could be reused to compile anothet text. In Brausewetter's paintings, we find an inverted palimpsest, which undercover deeper traces underneath the dark paint.
His black and white paintings evoke the efficacy (puissance) that Moser and Buci-Glucksmann talk about. They delude shapes and oscilate between abstract and concrete, and thus build this perception of ambivalence that constitutes both historical Baroque and transhistorical Neo-Baroque. The central aspect is that they alude to the play of illusion itself.  Certainly it is not a trompe l’oeil in te traditional sense of the term, nor the depiction of tridimensionality in the tradition of Pozzo or the Bolognese School of the Carraci brothers. It is rather in the evocation of an illusion the builds itself in the spectator and conducts him/her to an admiration (as defined by Descartes), depending on the perspective to new experiences. Such an effect is even stronge in the large-scale versions. Another aspect of Neo-Baroque that might be invoked here is the idea of cycle narration. The serial paintings function as a constant commentary of the work itself. The refer to each other, while referring to thrmselves, questioning the status of the image. In this way, they oscilate between abstract and figurative, between the depiction of a fixed moment and the ephemeral. The ephemeral, another key concept of Baroque and Neo-Baroque, is also importang in the understanding of Brausewetter's creative process and his colourful paintings. The scraping, thevdemonstration of the ephemeral, the moment in the making are part of te diversity and the flux of differenz performances that realize themselves as an unfinished process to the spectactor.
This archaeology of a Neo-Baroque form is also present in Brauswetter's sculptures of various dimensions. The relation between the drawings and the sculptures is visible, while also aluding to a performatic aspect, implicitly ephemeral. However, the paintings and the drawings should not be seen as sketches for the three-dimensional works, or as a preparation for them. On the contrary, they are paart of this visual archaeology inscribed in a Neo-Baroque approach. Such relations between the different kinds and media emphasize the works as multimediatic, without clinging to the idea of a Gesamtskunstwerk. This mediatic diversity serves to focus the spectator, together with the work's creator, in the centre of the issue. In thi sense, the creative process, as well as the perceptive one, is unfinished – although the black and white paintings never present themselves as an arbitrarious interruption, but in their shapes and fragmented clusters, as visual auto-reflexive comments between them and the beholder.  The latter becomes  (and this was for me quite evident while visiting Brausewetter's studio) as a passenger on a trip, going through the various fragments.
The fragment also involves the issue to recycling, which can be understoof as one of the essential traits of Neo-Baroque. Such a concept, as defined by Ndalianis and Moser, renders Neo-Baroque quite distinct from a historicist aesthetics that construes the reuse of a historical style as an evocation of certain ideas linked to it.  The latter is only a repetition of a style, so as to create a pluralism of styles at the end of the 19th century, extending itself to the 20th century. On the other hand, Neo-Baroque recycles not only styles, but must be understood as a recycling and reappropriation of various currents of a historical Baroque, in a transhistorical and transcultural way, while overcoming restrictions of models of a standardizing modernism. In this sense, and not by chance, Brausewetter builds his sculptures and objects with used materials, which are then treated and modified to reappaear in another visual context. Again one can observe a dobule oscilation: first, they do not totally loose their relation with the original material, though not completely recognizable; second, the sculpture alude to bstrat objects, as well as to an architectural sculpture that may look like a new building, although never loosing its appearance as a piece of furniture.  This way of creating a pschychic tension between the various references (often contrarious and opposed) is on the basis of transhistorical Neo-Baroque. However Brausewetter goes beyoung such oscilation between different visual currents, and makes use of basic geometric forms in these objects, so as to subvert modernism rigour in his Neo-Baroque approach – without deminishing of denouncing the origin of this Neo-Baroque in modernism.  This is also important to mention. Neo-Baroque thought stms not only from authors like Omar Calabrese or Christine Buci-Glucksmann, but also from author and philosopher Walter Benjamin, who revaluates modernism from his reading of Baroque.  From such basis (which cannot be discussed mor deeply here), we can see the simple forms of rigorous modernism reinterpreted in Bausewetter's work.
Finally, I would like to point out to the context in which Brausewetter has been working in recent years, constantly in the move between Vienna and São Paulo. Both these cities have their very own and specific skylines – even if São Paulo as a megalopolis does not seem to have a specific skyline at first sight.  The relation between the architecture of Vienna, and its visual representations, and Baroque. On the other hand, the relation of São Paulo with a Neo-Baroque city might be less evident. All handbooks about São Paulo will define it as a modernist city, despite its foundation in early colonial era – a city that destroys its own memory. But as mentioned, the net or grid of the city maintains its structure in reference to its origins. The city presents itself as a great palimpsest, in which modernist architects have tried to tear away the memory of the past to write their history. However, te vestiges remain, they sparkle, and appear quite clearly. Also, modernity is depicted as an unfinished project in São Paulo. So, thr meta-structure of the modernist city par excellence can be read as a Neo-Baroque city. In this sense, Brausewetter's works that allude to architecture can be construed as contributors to the project of a Neo-Baroque archaeology of modernism itself.  The superimpositions of modernist buildings that follow the rigour of the sharp angle or the curve by Niemeyer become an image of trompe l’oeil. Comwe certainly cannot reduce the black and white paintings, as well as the sculptures, as depicting this city, but they can be understood as an archaeology of such processes. Modernist forms are not superfluous, but they are embeded in a creative and perceptive transhistorical and transcultural process of Neo-Baroque.