Installations in Neustift

Lamentable (2005) - France

This work consists of a grid of neon tubes arranged in a geometric pattern that creates a sense of depth and movement. The work is designed to be viewed from different angles, with the changing perspectives allowing the viewer to experience the changing patterns of light and shadow. The title of the work refers to the fact that Morellet considered the use of neon tubes in art to be a regrettable (lamentable) waste of energy, but at the same time he recognised the beauty of their luminosity and the possibilities they offer for artistic expression.

FRANÇOIS MORELLET - BIOGRAPHY:

François Morellet's (1926-2016) early work was influenced by the Concrete Art movement, which emphasised abstraction and geometric forms. He experimented with a variety of materials, including neon, metal and paint, and often incorporated mathematical principles and systems into his work. In the 1960s, he joined the Minimal Art movement and began creating large-scale installations and "environmental art".

MUHAMMAD ALI (2008) - Germany

In the work "Muhammad Ali", the writing "ME WE" goes back to the quote of the legendary boxer Muhammad Ali, three-time world heavyweight champion, who fought against racism and became known for his negative stance against the Vietnam War as well as his social statements. "ME WE" is not alone considered Muhammad Ali's shortest poem, but must be read as a political message in a society of inequality. Since the lettering made of wooden slats is arranged as a block, the centre becomes a mental mirror axis. Bergmann's work was presented in the exhibition "Favoriten 08" in the Kunstbau at the Lenbach house in Munich in 2008. 

BENJAMIN BERGMANN - BIOGRAPHY:

Benjamin Bergmann (born 1968) devotes his work to creating sculptures and installations. Since his installations resemble a play, he also describes himself as the director of his space-filling works. In these worlds, the artist plays with the viewer's emotions by questioning the relationship to reality, causing irritation and thus often breaking familiar ideas and patterns of perception.

We Are The People (2003) and No Lie Can Live Forever (2003) - USA

Over the past twenty years, Durant has evaluated the image archives of international protests and demonstrations from the early twentieth century to the present as sources for drawings and large-scale light boxes. In his lightboxes, handwritten statements are transposed from source photographs into a format typically associated with commercial signage and advertising. "We Are The People" and "No Lie Can Live Forever" (2003) are expressive examples of this. In these, the artist creates spontaneous, quick and subjective messages conveyed through an informative display mode; and yet, the statements take on a new urgency and power through their factual delivery.

SAM DURANT - BIOGRAFIE:

Sam Durant (b. 1961) is a multimedia artist whose work addresses a variety of social, political and cultural issues. Often drawing on American history, his work explores the different relationships between culture and politics, and deals with topics as diverse as the civil rights movement, Southern rock music and modernism.

FLOW

For the site-specific intervention FLOW, Angelika Höger translates natural shaping processing as in crystalline, liquid, and gaseous states of water into artistic constructions made of straws of paper and plastic. With a multitude of modules, she forms a kind of fluid mesh that extends from the entrance hall to the second floor.

ANGELIKA HÖGER - BIOGRAPHY:

Angelika Höger's artistic material includes everyday objects such as kitchen utensils, discarded household appliances and waste products, which she employs for collages, objects, or installations. Since 2000, she has exhibited mainly in Germany. She studied Visual Communication at the University of Applied Sciences for Design in Bielefeld and graduated with a Master of Arts (MA) in 2014. She lives in Bielefeld, Germany.

Geborgenheit

The textile sculpture consists of countless meters of finely gridded textile, loosely laid in some places, and densely layered in others. In the interplay with animated and projected graphics, optical interferences are created. They render visible a variety of degrees of opacities and generate an ethereal aesthetic emerges, reminiscent of water, mist, or clouds.

CHRISTINE SCIULLI - BIOGRAPHY:

Christine Sciulli composes site-specific sculptures from textile materials that are animated by graphic projections. She uses the interplay of spatial properties, textile qualities and digital projections to create immersive installations. Christine Sciulli is a visual artist living and working in New York and received her Master of Fine Art from Hunter College in 1998 in addition to her Bachelor of Architectural Engineering from Penn State University in 1990.

TENTAKULUM

Natural networks and energy systems are the visual material of the artists for TENTAKULUM. Their raw material includes micro- and macroscopic images of flora and fauna as well as artistic drawings and graphics. Edited, collaged, animated, and projected, they become part of an associative flow of images about ecological habitats and address humanity's accountability to nature.

GROLL-BERNDT-SELTMANN - BIOGRAPHIES:

In addition to their independent artistic careers, Tom Groll, Katharina Berndt and Kuno Seltmann work as a media art collective, preferably with silhouette and shadow image, photography, film and projection in spatial installations and video projections. They research the formal languages of nature and experiment with new visual imageries. Tom Groll has been working as a freelance artist since 1996, Katharina Berndt since 2008, and Kuno Seltmann since 2013. The artists are based in Germany.

MOON BOWL

For the installation MOON BOWL, Ken Matsubara uses traditional household vessels as containers for digital animations. On view are digital animations of black-and-white photographs of selected objects that break in endless repetitions, disappear into the darkness, and reappear on the surface.

KEN MATSUBARA - BIOGRAFIE:

Ken Matsubara works with photography, moving image and digital animation. For his objects, he combines small objects from everyday life with digital imagery. His themes are repetition, memory, and the transmission of memory. Ken Matsubara has exhibited regularly since the 1980s. He graduated from Musashino Art University in Tokyo in 1974. He lives in Tokyo.

FLORA

FLORA is digital graphic instrument that draws plant-like shapes. Visitors are invited to experiment with it. The animation in FLORA is spawned by superimposed sine waves moving through a series of lines. This wave principle often occurs in nature when energy is transmitted through a medium such as water or air. Philipp Artus has coded it into an algorithmic system that implements the visitor's instructions in real time.

PHILIPP ARTUS - BIOGRAFIE:

Philipp Artus creates experimental animations as drawings, objects, and installations. They are poetic constructs developed from a mixture of a kind of technical drawings, mathematical considerations, and algorithmic possibilities. Since 2011, he has exhibited in numerous European countries. He studied at the Nantes University of the Arts and the Cologne Media Art Academy, graduating in 2012 with a diploma in Medial Arts. He currently lives in Berlin.

RAINBOW

Just as the interplay of light refraction, diffraction and reflection in nature creates a rainbow, Nazanin Fakoor generates optical interference with projections on mirror films. The moving screens display the colour-intensive video animations and simultaneously generate coloured reflections that meander through the space.

NAZANIN FAKOOR - BIOGRAFIE:

In her artistic practice Nazanin Fakoor combines video, installation, and performance. Her artistic material are ephemeral phenomena of the interaction of light, image, and optical tools, with which she creates walk-in visual spaces. Since 2006 she has been realizing art projects in different contexts, mainly in Benelux. She studied in Belgium, France, Germany and graduated with a Master of Arts (MA) in scenography. She lives in Brussels.

FLOATING MATTER

From the artist's archive comes the over- and underwater footage from all over the world, which is the basis of the video essay. She combines, collages and manipulates video footage of natural phenomena, plants and animals with image particles created by imaging techniques such as transilluminating, scanning, and projecting. 

GUDRUN BARENBROCK - BIOGRAPHY:

Collecting and sorting, specifying, and insisting are closely intertwined aspects of Gudrun Barenbrock's artistic practice. She is interested in experimentation - with cinematic materiality and technical apparatus, with time and exhibition spaces, with systems of perception and thought. She is looking for aesthetic phenomena which allow to expand knowledge, insights, and meaning. She graduated from the At Academy Muenster in 1993. She lives in Cologne. 

SPILL

As part of the YOUNG MASTERS' PROGRAM, a selection of objects and installations created by young artists will be on view at Kloster Neustift. The spectrum ranges from opto-kinetic works to interactive projections and AI-based projects created during studies or in the studio. They play with the ambiguity of data material, they speculate about connections and interactions in transmedia experiments. They show how physical and digital objects coexist and interact in real time. They are part of current artistic research and practice in which there is a shift from the permanent to the performative, from object to perception, from the physical to the virtual.  

YOUNG MASTERS Brixen - BIOGRAFIE:

Students from the Bremen University of the Arts and the University of Bremen show media objects and responsive installations that feature light, energy and complex interactions. SPILL is an international project group of students of digital media, integrated design, and liberal arts under the direction of Bettina Pelz. With contributions by Debaditya Bhowmik, Youngji Cho, Fish Tank, Nathalie Gebert, Hofmeister — Mushtrieva — Savelyeva, Bon Kim, Sangbong Lee, Jimi Liu, Mria Prosphora, Slava Romanov, Lorenz Potthast (Xenorama), Kui Xu.  The YOUNG MASTERS' PROGRAM is curated by Bettina Pelz. It is supported by the Bremen University of the Arts and the Friends of the Bremen University of the Arts.