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
Past Resident2014: Creative New Zealand
Brett Graham
Brett Graham abstracts complex historical and cultural ideas into sculptural forms and installations. His work engages ideas of both Indigenous and Western art, drawing on Maori culture but informed by contemporary art practice. His work embraces indigenous histories, often critiquing and exploring issues relating to cultural inequities of the past and present.
Brett Graham completed his BFA at Auckland University and his MFA at the University of Hawaii. Graham returned to lecture in the Art History Department at the University of Auckland before teaching full time at Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland University. There he completed his Doctorate of Fine Arts. He has been an artist full time since 2005, exhibiting twice at the Sydney Biennale in 2006 and 2010 and at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. Last year his work was part of Sakahan, an exhibition of Indigenous Art the National Museum of Canada. He has work in the collections of the Museum of New Zealand and the National Gallery of Australia. Graham lives and works in Auckland.
Events & Exhibitions
Brooklyn Commons: Ursula von Rydingsvard and Brett Graham
May 20, 2014
Residents from New Zealand
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.