- Øystein Aasan
- Stephane Barbier Bouvet
- Paolo Chiasera
- Jan De Cock
- Martino Gamper
- Jeppe Hein
- Lisa Lapinski
- Kai Linke
- Kueng Caputo
- Studio Makkink & Bey
- Michaela Meise
- Mirko Mielke
- Manfred Pernice
- Gianni Pettena
- Bertjan Pot
- Rodney LaTourelle
- Stefan Sagmeister
- Andrea Sala
- Joe Scanlan
- Clemence Seilles
- Judith Seng
- Jerszy Seymour
- Florian Slotawa
- Alex Valder
- Albert Weis
- Louise Witthoeft
- Johannes Wohnseifer
- Heimo Zobernig
Øystein Aasan (born 1977 in Kristiansand, Norway) studied art in Oslo and Berlin. He lives and works in Berlin and New York. Aasan uses a combination of materials, including paper, plywood, ink, adhesive letters, and photography, to address the qualities of reproduction and the fragility of memory. Selected exhibitions: Sørlandets Kunst Museum, Kristiansand Norway; FORDE, Geneva (2011); Lautom Contemporary, Oslo; La Vitrine, Paris; Kunstverein Arnsberg (2010); Art Forum Berlin, with Galerie Katharina Bittel; and Liste, Basel, with Lautom Contemporary, Oslo (2009). Selected awards: Pollock-Krassner Foundation (2007) and ISCP New York from Office for Contemporary Art, Oslo (2011).
Stephane Barbier Bouvet (born 1981 in Marseille) studied design in Ecal, Lausanne. In 2006, He opened 1m3, an exhibition space in Lausanne that he still runs. He has been working in the context of both design and art for the five last years and is involved in education through the Baba School, a project he co-founded in Paris, and the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. He has designed space and objects for the Federal Office of Culture in Switzerland, the City of Hyères, Centre Pompidou, Centre d’art contemporain of Geneva, Mudac, Musée des Beaux Arts de Lausanne, Head Geneva (Haut école d’art et de design), and Centro Culturale Svizerro di Milano among others.
Paolo Chiasera (born 1978 in Bologna) lives and works in Berlin. Chiasera is fascinated by history, art theory, philosophy, and post-philosophical myths, exploring these disciplines in order to construct artwork as complex systems of sense and conceptual opposition to the dominant “effect” of the culture industry. Selected exhibitions and projects: Painting 1 Analysis and Convergence, Oslo University, Oslo (2011); Rote Schauspielhaus, Verein von Kunst und Kultur am Rosa Luxemburg Platz, curated by S. Prinz, Berlin; S.M.A.K. – Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent; Condensed Heidegger’s Hut, PSM Gallery, Berlin; Hybris, Francesca Minini, Milan (2010); and Unter Freiem Himmel, Marta Herford Museum, Herford (2009).
Jan De Cock (born 1976 in Brussels) is renowned for his sculptural installations, which he considers monuments to modernism. His monumental installations often mix plywood sculptural modules that recall twentieth-century abstraction – formally referring to the modernist and constructivist idioms – with color and black-and-white photographs, video, and film. De Cock’s work departs from the classical idea that art materializes an internal struggle. For him, art is more a construction of thoughts that takes on a position in the total field of contemporary culture. Selected recent exhibitions: Via dell’ Abbondanza, Francesca Minini, Milan (2010); Repromotion, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (2009); Modern is changing fig. 4, Stella Lohaus Gallery, Antwerp; and Denkmal 11, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2008).
Martino Gamper (born 1971 in Meran) studied product design at the University of Applied Arts and the Academy of Art in Vienna after completing his apprenticeship as a cabinet maker. After his studies he worked for a few years for well-known design firms in Milan before moving to London in 1998. In addition to a fascination with formal design, Gamper is interested in the social and societal meanings of design. His pieces are often composed of unwanted or discarded furniture assembled into new pieces. They meld aspects of design and crafts and tend to arise out of necessity. Assorted incidents, such as a dinner event or the revitalization of a square in London, often prompt the design of new pieces and give them their character and history. Gamper’s work has been shown at various venues, including the V & A, the Design Museum London, Nilufar Gallery, Oxo Tower, the Kulturhuset in Stockholm, the Trienale in Milan, the MAK in Vienna, and the National Gallery in Oslo.
Jeppe Hein (born 1974 in Copenhagen) lives and works in Copenhagen and Berlin. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Art and at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. His works include large sculptures and interactive installations, some with motorized or mechanical elements. He participated in the Venice Biennale in 2003 and has shown work internationally in many exhibitions and collections, including the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Tate Modern in London, Tate in Liverpool, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Sculpture Center in New York, MoCA in Los Angeles, Neues Museum in Nuremburg, MMK in Frankfurt, and Lehnbachhaus in Munich.
Lisa Lapinski (born 1967 in Palo Alto, California) lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She studied philosophy at the University of California in San Diego and art at the Art Center of Design in Pasadena. In 2004 she was the recipient of the Guggenheim fellowship, which she used to support the realization of “Nightstand,” a major work that was featured at the Whitney Biennial that same year. Selected solo exhibitions: Johann König, Berlin (2011); Th th th th th Snow White, Taka Ishii Gallery, Kyoto (2010); Schürmann Berlin, Berlin (2009); Linz Wedding Song, Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles (2008); Linz Wedding Song, Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis (2007); and Goose Fair, Galerie Claudio Guenzani, Milan, Italy (2004. Lapinski has participated in various group shows in Los Angeles, New York, Berlin, London, Tokyo, and Milan.
Kai Linke (born 1980 in Offenbach) lives and works in Frankfurt am Main. He studied architecture at the University of Technology in Darmstadt and then enrolled at the Academy of Art and Design in Offenbach, studying in the Department of Industrial Design. After working as a freelancer for some time, he set up his own design studio in Frankfurt. The work of Kai Linke is based on the philosophy that design can be conceptual, environmentally friendly, and functional at the same time. He believes that designing objects is like using a language to explain thoughts and feelings. His work, which he describes as a mixture between art and design playfully oriented on nature, has been seen at numerous national and international exhibitions and fairs since 2005.
Kueng Caputo(founded 2006 in Zurich) are Sarah Kueng and Lovis Caputo. Based in Zurich, they have worked together since 2006. Sarah Kueng and Lovis Caputo practice design as a response, with an emphasis on understatement and improvisation. They explore mundane materials and environments to exercise and reflect concepts of high design and architecture. Their first Five Stars Cardboard installations at the Salone Satellite in 2007 went on to show in South Korea, Basel, and New York. They exhibited at the Frieze Art Fair in London 2010 and received the Swiss Federal Design Award in 2009.
Studio Makkink & Bey (founded 2002 in Rotterdam) is led by architect Rianne Makkink and designer Jurgen Bey. Supported by a design team, they have been operating their design practice since 2002. Studio Makkink & Bey investigates the various domains of applied art while exploring the tension between the private and public domain. They weave cohesive narratives throughout their product, furniture, and interior design. The studio has recently launched several limited edition furniture collections, gaining even more creative freedom to develop ideas and products that are not meant for the mass market, like the Crate Series for Gallery Spring Projects in Londen autumn 2010. Recent projects include the interior for the Balancing Barn in Suffolk and Silver Sugar Spoon, shown at Vienna Design Week in 2010.
Michaela Meise (born 1976 in Hanau) lives and works in Berlin. She studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main and at the Art University Kassel. Her straightforward and sometimes minimalistic installations often stand in very fragile relation to their surroundings. Some works bear characteristics of modernistic furniture while others consist of images “contaminated” by fragments of personal memories, thus making the artist’s own cultural conditioning apparent. Her works have been shown at the Kunstverein in Graz, Kunstverein in Braunschweig, Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe and many other internationally recognized venues. Other projects, like her concerts, brought her to Kunsthalle Schirn, Frankfurt am Main, and Volksbühne am Rosa Luxemburg Platz, Berlin.
Mirko Mielke (born 1976 in Hamburg) studied visual communication and experimental design at the Berlin University of the Arts and photography and sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologne, Italy. Since 2004 Mirko Mielke has been documenting the disappearance of buildings. In his photographs and installations, architecture becomes a carrier of visual communication and thus an independent object of perception. His works about the East German Ministry of Health in Berlin and prefab high rises in Berlin Marzahn-Hellerdorf demonstrate the paradox of the presence and absence of a buildings and their material remains, establishing a relationship between photography and architectural fragments. Selected recent exhibitions: Le Confident/La Causeuse, Galerie Kvant, Berlin and Source/Resource, Wilde Gallery, Berlin.
Manfred Pernice (born 1963 in Hildesheim) lives and works in Berlin. He studied at the Braunschweig University of Art and the Berlin University of the Arts. Manfred Pernice works and recycles humble construction materials from the built environment, like particleboard, concrete, steel, and cardboard, and reconfigures them into open-ended sculptural propositions. Pernice’s objects and installations, such as “deja vue 12” (2008), suggest invented architectonic forms yet retain traces of their past use or associations. Recently, his work has been seen in Salzburg, Strasbourg, Oxford, Vienna, London, Brussels, Los Angeles, and Mexico.
Gianni Pettena (born 1940 in Bolzano) lives in Florence. Together with Archizoom, Superstudio, and UFO, Gianni Pettena belongs to the original nucleus of the Radical Movement in Italy, a major influence on contemporary experimentation in the fields of architecture and design. Using the vocabulary of conceptual art and the rhetoric of political discourse, Pettena analyzed the transformation of physical space in the urban context. In 2008 he interrupted his tenure as a professor of the history of contemporary architecture at the University of Florence, partly as a mark of his disapproval of the way the Italian system of universities is currently run. At the same time, he continued teaching architectural design at California State University. Recently his work has been seen in Berlin, Shanghai, Warsaw, Florence, Paris, and Vienna (The Death of the Audience, Secession, 2009).
Bertjan Pot (born 1975 in Nieuwleusen) graduated from the Man and Identity department at Design Academy Eindhoven (NDL). He then started to work as a freelance designer and founded Monkey Boys together with fellow Academy graduate Daniel White. While working and playing with materials and ideas they designed their own collection of furniture and lighting. In 2003, the Monkey Boys decided to go their own ways. Pot continued to work under the name Studio Bertjan Pot. His work has recently been shown in Groningen, London, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo, and can be found in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the MoMa, New York; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the FNAC, Paris (French National Art Collection).
Rodney LaTourelle (born 1965 in Winnipeg) lives and works in Berlin. Following his studies at the University of Manitoba, where he received a Bachelor of Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture, he maintained an interdisciplinary practice as an artist, designer, and writer. His installations draw from the fields of both art and architecture, examining the affective relationship between color, spatial arrangements, and the viewer’s experience. He constructs precisely painted, polychrome environments. LaTourelle’s work has been exhibited at numerous venues, including the National Gallery, Canada (2008, 2010); Exit Art, New York (2010); University of Quebec, Montreal (2009); Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg (2009); Artnews Projects, Berlin (2009); Kunsthalle Göppingen, Germany (2008); and Program Gallery, Berlin (2007).
Stefan Sagmeister (born 1962 in Bregenz) lives and works in New York. He received his MFA from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and, as a Fulbright Scholar, a master's degree from Pratt Institute in New York. He has designed album covers for Lou Reed, OK Go, the Rolling Stones, David Byrne, Aerosmith, and Pat Metheny. In 2001 a best selling monograph about his work titled “Sagmeister, Made you Look” was published. Solo shows of Sagmeister Inc's work have been mounted throughout the world, and he lectures extensively on all continents. His second major title “Things I've Learned In My Life So Far” was published in 2010.
Andrea Sala (born 1976 in Como) lives and works between Milan and Montreal. After graduating from Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Milan, he began taking part in exhibitions in Italy and abroad. Since early on in his career, he has been paying special attention to various forms of design and architecture, questioning their typical materials and formal values. Selected recent exhibitions: Manimal, Kaleidoscope Space, Milan; La Scultura Italiana del XXI secolo, Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan; SI - Sindrome Italiana: La jeune création artistique italienne, Le Magasin-Centre National d’Art Contemporain de Grenoble, France; A Basic Human Impulse, Galleria Comunale d’Arte Contemporanea di Monfalcone, Gorizia (2010); Cicognino, Optica Centre for Contemporary Art,Montréal; Actions: What You Can Do With the City, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, Canada; Networks, Federica Schiavo Gallery, Rome (2009).
Joe Scanlan (born 1961 in Stoutsville, Ohio) holds a bachelor of fine arts degree from Columbus College of Art and Design. For twenty years, his work and writings have focused on the political economy of art and the influence of fetishism and use value in the evaluation of culture. Scanlan has been particularly involved in the relationship between artworks and design objects and the way each designation hinges on an object’s inherent potential for preservation or destruction. Selected exhibitions: K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westphalen, Düsseldorf, Germany; Institut d’Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne, France; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands; and the IKON Gallery in Birmingham, England. Selected group exhibitions: ICA, London; Artists Space, New York; Aperto, Venice; and Documenta IX, Kassel. Scanlan lives in New York City.
Clemence Seilles (born 1984 in Besancon) studied at the School of Art and Design in Reims before attending London’s Royal College of Art. During her studies, she spent several months in Rotterdam at Atelier van Lieshout, where she participated in the project “heterotopia: a deviant world with a geographical existence.” In October 2008 she attended Jerszy Seymour’s design workshop. Clemence Seilles produces real life situations through the use of objects, performances, and installations. She has taken part in various group shows in Paris for Le VIA des écoles, in London at Charming Disaster, head-lines, Excell design centre, RCA graduation show, Auto-progettazione, and revisited, and in Amsterdam at Room3 at the Lloyd Hotel. She also recently inaugurated the café at the HBC in Berlin.
Judith Seng (born 1974 in Karlsruhe) lives and works in Berlin. Her work reflects situations of everyday living and sharpens the perception of individual phenomena in our physical and cultural environment. Seng develops aesthetic and conceptual ideas and for the most part materializes them in the form of objects. Judith Seng’s work has been exhibited internationally and can be found in the collection of the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain (FNAC) as well as in the portfolios of companies and galleries. Selected exhibitions and projects: Design Halt Kunst, Gallery Neumeister, Munich; ACTING THINGS (experimental production), theater HAU 3, Berlin (2011); Totem and Taboo, St. Ambrogio, Milan; Kronleuchter, Museum Bellerive, Zurich (2010); Prophets and Penitents, St. Ambrogio, Milan; Nullpunkt: Nieuwe German Gestaltung, MARTa, Herford (2009); Crossings, Gallery Post Design, Milan (2008); Junges deutsches Design, Gesellschaft für Kunst und Gestaltung, Bonn (2006); and Young + German, Tokyo and Berlin (2005).
Jerszy Seymour (born in 1968 Berlin) grew up in London during the eclectic up and down turmoil of the eighties. He studied engineering at South Bank Polytechnic from 1987 to 1990 and industrial design at the Royal College of Art from 1991 to 1993. His work includes collaborations with companies such as Vitra, Magis, and Alessi and installations and actions in museums, galleries, and public spaces that are both critical of the capital consumer economy and seek to renegotiate our relationship to the world based on the freedom of libidinal and instinctual energy, including the Mudam Luxembourg, MAK Vienna, Vitra Design Museum, and Kreo gallery in Paris.
Florian Slotawa (born 1972 in Rosenheim) lives and works in Berlin. He studied at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Rather than creating new objects from scratch, Florian Slotawa rearranges and recontextualizes what already exists. He assembles and arranges furniture and everyday objects in elaborate compositions that respond to the rooms and spaces in which they are presented. Selected solo exhibitions: P.S.1/MoMA, Long Island (2009), Solothurn aussen, Kunstverein Solothurn, Switzerland (2008); One After the Other, Arthouse, Austin (2007); Modern Art, London (2006); and Haus am Waldsee, Berlin (2005). Selected group shows: Made in Germany, Sprengel Museum, Hannover (2007) and Of Mice and Men: 4th Biennial for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2006).
Alex Valder (born 1971 in Berlin) lives and works in Berlin. After studying at the University of the Arts in Berlin under Enzo Mari und Nick Roericht and a stint at the CCAC in San Francisco, he joined ArchiMeDes in Berlin as an exhibition designer and later became a founding member of Archimedes-Solutions GmbH. At the same time, he realized independent projects such as the conversion of an APE50 to a mobile catering and event vehicle with which he traveled to various undiscovered spots in Berlin, the temporary BAR MLECZNY (a kiosk for Polish food and culture in Berlin), a series of environmentally friendly disposable tableware, and (together with Judith Seng) studies for the reinterpretation of traditional glass blowing techniques at the CIAV Meisenthal in France. He has been operating his own studio in Berlin since 2010.
Albert Weis (born 1969 in Passau) lives and works in Berlin. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich from 1989 to 1997 and taught at the University of Kaiserslautern in 2002 and 2003. Albert Weis designs complex, multifaceted referential systems with which he investigates and analyzes the principles of modernity – however ideal or rigid some of those principles may be – reformulating them in new works. By investigating the underlying structures of a given space, Weis develops complex, sculptural works that in turn engender the formation of new conceptual models. In 2010 Weis had exhibitions of his work at the Academy of Arts in Berlin; Daimler Contemporary, Haus Huth, Berlin; Centre d’art Dudelange, Luxembourg; and Galerie M + R Fricke, Berlin. In previous years his work was seen at Haus Lange/Kunstmuseen Krefeld; Sprengel Museum Hannover, Nusser & Baumgart, Munich and Leipzig; Centre d’Art Passerelle, Brest; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Kunstmuseum Bonn; and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, New York).
Louise Witthoeft (born 1977 in Copenhagen) was educated at the Danish Design School (Department of Spatial and Furniture Design). She currently works as an independent curator and designer in Berlin, incorporating exhibition design as part of her curatorial practice. Her exhibition strategies are based on the transdisciplinary connections between art, design, critical theory, and art history. For Artist’s Treasures, a project she cocurated in 2006 with Ana von Stackelberg, Janet Cardiff, Rebecca Horn, and Robert Wilson were invited to select four young Berlin artists to create a new work for a site-specific art project at the Königstadt brewery in Berlin. With Sophie Hamacher, she cocurated the 2007 group exhibition ÜBERleben at Program, Berlin. She recently collaborated with Rodney LaTourelle on numerous projects, including a public art commission for a financial organization in Königs Wusterhausen in 2008, the color concept for the University of Winnipeg, Canada, in 2010, and Who Is Lou, a performative installation at Proekt Fabrika in Moscow, Russia, in 2010.
Johannes Wohnseifer (born 1967 in Cologne) lives and works in Cologne and Erfstadt. Instead of studying art, from 1992 to 1997 Wohnseifer immersed himself in the business of art as an assistant to German artist Martin Kippenberger. Wohnseifer plays with the cultural transformation of classic landmarks of media, architecture, art, and design. His work has been shown internationally in many exhibitions and collections, including the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, Projektraum, Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Bonner Kunstverein, Sprengel Museum in Hannover, Ludwig Forum Aachen, Aachen and Ulm Kunstverein, Kunsthalle in Vienna, and Städtisches Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach.
Heimo Zobernig (born 1958 in Mauthen, Austria) lives and works in Vienna. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts from 1977 to 1980, followed by further studies from 1980 to 1983 at the University of Applied Arts, both in Vienna. After two visiting professorships in Germany, he has been teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna since 2000. Zobernig has exhibited extensively all over the world, creating a considerable body of work that includes sculpture, video, painting, installation, architectural intervention, and performance. Selected group exhibitions: Documenta IX and X, Kassel; Selected solo exhibitions: Museum of Modern Art, Vienna; Kunsthalle Basel; K21, Düsseldorf; Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon; Tate St. Ives, Cornwall; Galleria Civica di Modena, CAPC; and musée d’art contemporain, Bordeaux.