Past Residents
Past Resident2016: KdFS Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen
Franz Jyrch
In Franz Jyrch’s installations and sculptural settings, canvases and stretcher frames play a significant role. The basic approach to her work, which is characterized by coincidence and calculation alike, consists of arranging and deconstructing very diverse materials taken from artistic contexts and everyday life as well. Thereby, she creates complex sculptures and installations which can fill entire rooms. It leaves us with the impression that painting has emancipated itself from its central coordinates, with its ‘assistants’ conquering new spaces beyond the narrow square of the frame. Instead, the exhibit space now provides the actual framework for a much more complex pictorial narrative, one that integrates many things that are outside of the art context. (Text by Ralf F. Hartmann)
Franz Jyrch graduated from the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig in 2012. She received the Marion Ermer Award and completed her postgraduate studies in 2014. Solo shows include BONHEUR, Vincenz Sala, Paris; PARAVENT, Galerie EIGEN+ART Leipzig; KNICKE AND ORDER, Gallery of the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig; and La Pittura, Vincenz Sala, Berlin. Recent group shows include Plain Walls, White Teeth, Galerie Genscher, Hamburg; Yearzero, Kollektiv Unkonventionelle Kunst, Zurich; Mulhouse 015, Biennale d‘Art Contemporain, Mulhouse; WERKSCHAU, Spinnerei Galleries, Leipzig; A Room of One’s Own, Kunstverein Tiergarten, Berlin; and Sammlungsalphabet, Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig.
Franz Jyrch, o.t., 2014, Acrylic on stretchers, 16 1/2 x 24 x 7 in. Courtesy of the artist.
Past Resident2015: Danish Arts Foundation2013: Danish Arts Foundation
Annesofie Sandal
Annesofie Sandal’s work is strongly influenced by location and interest in sociocultural structures. Her sculptures and installations examine the thin line between exploration and exploitation in the production of cultural capital. She merges motifs and stories from different periods of time with existing shapes and materials to emphasize how the consequences of human behavior affect heritage and history. In doing so, she shows how the current exchange between man and nature connects past, present and future, and how the understanding of cultural, historic and religious symbols changes over time according to context.
Annesofie Sandal (born 1977 Seoul, South Korea) holds an MFA from The Royal Danish Academy of Visual Arts. She is based in Copenhagen and New York City. Her work has been displayed at numerous venues, including a solo exhibition at Rooster Gallery in New York City and Ace Art Inc. in Winnipeg, Canada. Last year, she was commissioned to create a sculpture for the Odense Sculpture Triennial and was invited for an international fellowship with The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, South Korea. Sandal has curated group shows at the National Art Studio in Seoul, South Korea and elsewhere. Sandal is also the founder and member of art group, Island Life. She recently participated in Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture’s residency program.
Annesofie Sandal, Mixed Paper, 2015, Video still, 2.58 min. Courtesy of the artist.
Residents from Denmark
Past Resident2016: Senate Department for Culture and Europe, Berlin
Aleksander Komarov
Much of Aleksander Komarov’s film work are edited as essays concerning the economic, political, and social conditions that have enabled his nomadic lifestyle- a hallmark of globalized artist-hood. Through film Komarov explores the recording and production of imagery as a political activity, were images therefore appear as co-producers of social conditions. In each work, the spectator is situated within a timeline, on the premise of deconstructing a conclusive documentary statement and instead offering up multiple possible routes towards meaning. As a person entangled in multiple political systems, he exposes the contemporary identity politics as a regulation mechanism of post-industrial exploitation and question whether the art itself now takes over the old assignment of rationalization and standardization.
Aleksander Komarov was born and raised in Belarus, trained as an artist in Glebov Art Leceum in Minsk, Belarus; the University of Fine Arts Poznan, Poland; and Rijksakademie, The Netherlands. He published filmic and written essays concerning questions of migrating identity’s, (cultural) globalization, the condition of contemporary art and its relation to broader economic contexts. His films include Estate (2008); Capital (2009), Glosy/Voices (2011), Palipaduazennje (2012), Language Lessons (2013). Komarov is also co-founder of Air Berlin Alexanderplatz, a research-related residency program in Berlin. His films were exhibited most recently at the Moscow Biennial (2015); Arsenal Gallery, Poland (2014) and The Way of the Shovel, curated by Dieter Roelstraete at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2013.
Events & Exhibitions
Salon: Tony Albert and Aleksander Komarov
November 24, 2015
Aleksander Komarov, Estate, 2010, Book. Courtesy of the artist and Torpedo Press.