Past Residents
Michelle-Marie Letelier
Michelle-Marie Letelier is interested in exploitation of minerals, working across topographic changes of a landscape, juxtaposed with the speculation of resources within the current economic framework. She spent her early life in Chuquicamata, the biggest open-pit copper mine in the world, in the Atacama Desert. This served as a starting point in her practice, documenting the town’s burial process through video and photography. Since settling in Berlin, Letelier has focused on copper and coal: minerals which have also become objects themselves in her drawings, paintings, objects and installations. Letelier’s work carries heavy socio-political overtones, especially in times of unveiled globalization, the increasing scarcity of raw materials and the crisis of the neoliberal model.
Michelle-Marie Letelier (born 1977, Rancagua, Chile) obtained her BFA at the Universidad Católica de Chile. Her recent solo exhibitions include Die Feinfühlige Zone, Die Ecke Gallery, Santiago and Doomed Scape,Perlini Arte Gallery, Padua. Her group exhibitions include Magic Block, Stiftelsen 3.14, Bergen and To Seize Matter and Leave a Landscape, X Video and Media Arts Biennial, Museum of Contemporary Art, Santiago. Her videos have been exhibited in several screenings and festivals across the world. In 2005, Letelier participated in the Mercosur Biennial and in 2012 she was awarded the first edition of ORA International Art Prize. Letelier lives and works in Berlin.
Events & Exhibitions
Salon: Michelle-Marie Letelier and Akansha Rastogi
July 8, 2014
Residents from Germany
Past Resident2014: A.F.I.S.
Gabriele Picco
In his paintings, Gabriele Picco uses every day items in order to explore the relationship between art and ordinary life. His works playfully interact with material, modern art masters, literature and society, but his work is always anchored in the present. His recent paintings are made with Brillo pads, dust, leftovers of We buy gold stores, and a moka coffee maker, stretching the boundaries between painting, sculpture and performance.
Gabriele Picco’s (born 1974, Brescia) works have been featured in various exhibitions all across Europe, Asia and United States, among them the Prague Biennale; the Urban Planning Exhibition Center, Shanghai; Fondazione Re Rebaudengo, Turin and Temp Art Space, New York. Picco has been awarded the Michetti Prize for European painting and the New York Prize. His work is also included in collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The The Robert Lehman Foundation; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Monfalcone and The Montblanc Collection, Hamburg. He is also a writer, with two novels published in Italy, Spain, Portugal and South America. Picco currently lives between Italy and New York.
Residents from Italy
Raffaela Naldi Rossano

The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies, Columbia University, Italian Cultural Institute of New York, Directorate-General for Public and Cultural Diplomacy of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture
2024
Past Resident2014: Ministry of Culture of the Flemish Community Visual Arts Department
Manor Grunewald
Manor Grunewald is first and foremost as a painter, although he is also active in the fields of sculpture, installation and prints. His work is characterised by the constant analysis of the development of the pictorial in our daily environment. He finds and collects the sources of his images everywhere in daily life: in newspapers, advertising, books, comics, digital media and even illustrations of biological microcosms and macrocosms. His image archive serves as a source of inspiration, and his found pictorial material is often altered, partially on purpose and in some cases arbitrarily, by copying, enlarging or collaging. The artist thus creates new pictorial information, which is largely free of cognitively controlled processes and which reveal the unfamiliar, allowing this to become the content of his painting.
Manor Grunewald’s works have been exhibited across Europe and in the United States. In 2011, he was nominated for the Young Belgian Painters Prize at BOZAR. Recently, he has completed solo projects at Arco Madrid, Volta New York and Volta 9, Basel. Grunewald has presented recent solo exhibitions at Galerie Fortlaan 17, Ghent and Chaplini Gallery, Cologne. He will take part in a group exhibition with Evan Gruzis and Christian Vetter at Super Dakota Gallery, Brussels in April 2014.