Current Resident: Jan 1, 2025–Jun 30, 2025

KdFS Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen

Studio #214

Artist

Matthias Garff

Matthias Garff’s work focuses on the depiction of animals and our relationship with nature. Using found objects and recycled materials, he creates sculptures that are playful, thought-provoking, and marked by a fragile beauty. His work highlights biodiversity and features urban wildlife that has ingeniously adapted to its environment. His often larger-than-life sculptures blur the boundaries between human and animal identity and encourage us to reflect on our use of resources.

Matthias Garff has exhibited work at Museum im Kleihues-Bau, Germany; House of Arts, Czech Republic; and YIRI ARTS, Taiwan, among others.

garff.de

Events & Exhibitions

Artists at Work: Matthias Garff in Conversation with Hannah Kirshenbaum

June 10, 2025, 6:30–7:30pm

Spring Open Studios 2025

April 25–April 26, 2025

Matthias Garff, Gardenbirds, 2019, Installation and mixed media. Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts, Germany.

An upright walking green woodpecker in rubber boots with a long curved beak from an armrest

Matthias Garff, Green woodpecker, 2020, rubber boots, school bag, armrest, canister, fake fur and paint, 47 × 63 × 24 in. (119.38 × 160.02 × 60.96 cm).

A tawny owl out of an aluminium bowl and a bicycle helmet sitting on a pole.

Matthias Garff, Tawny owl, 2022, aluminium bowl, pot, bicycle helmet and dishwashing brushes, 8 × 15 × 10 in. (20.32 × 38.1 × 25.4 cm).

A grey heron out of an old street lamp stands on the shore of a lake.

Matthias Garff, Grey heron, 2024, street lamp, steel pipe, pegs, pot lid, teaspoon and bicycle mudguard, 32 × 100 × 67 in. (81.28 × 254 × 170.18 cm).

A giant wasp with wings made from tennis rackets.

Matthias Garff, Wasp, 2024, aluminum bowl, tennis racket, tricycle handlebars, tent poles, bicycle saddle and tires, 30 × 47 × 7 in. (76.2 × 119.38 × 17.78 cm).

Residents from Germany

Lukas Marxt

Germany, Portugal

Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport of Austria

Studio #218

Szu-Ying Hsu (Ida)

Taiwan, Germany

Ministry of Culture, Taiwan

Studio #302

Ina Gerken

Germany, United States

RYAN LEE Gallery

2025

Donate

Zimbabwe

Past Resident
2025: Tauck Ritzau Innovative Philanthropy, Dennis Elliott Founder's Fund

Artist

Felix Shumba

Felix Shumba is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses drawing, painting, video, text, and installation work. His work attempts at deconstructing spaces (real or imagined)—which he describes as Fold Fields Space (FFS). These are sites generally characterized and haunted by death, trauma, tension, restraint, psychic terror, ecological damage and use of the military as an apparatus of control.

Felix Shumba has exhibited work at Galleria Fonti, Italy; Jahmek Contemporary Art, Angola; and Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates, among others.

The work was created at a time in which i and everyone around me felt completely uncertain, anguished, fragile andin grief because of the COVID pandemic. I became interested in the idea of uncertainty in events and in life, more so to the political funeral processions as an event which are unpredictable in postcolonial states. A funeral often leads to chaos, instability and peace

Felix Shumba, Indx-flower-memoir, anecdote, prism 16,97, 2021, oil on canvas, 78 × 59 in. (198.12 × 149.86 cm).

Felix Shumba, The catalogue of Carnivorous plants and it's preys, 2023, 96 × 55 in. (243.84 × 139.7 cm).

Ruwa River is an multiple sensory installation commissioned and supported by the Sharjah Art Foundation for the 15º Edition of Sharjah Biennial, 2023. The installation reflected on the chemical and biological war in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. The installation consisted of a matrix of boxes evoking the mechanisms of intelligence gathering and looting deployed by the colonizers, with hidden speakers playing field sound , written recorded war letters evoking the conflict’s atrocities

Felix Shumba, Ruwa River, 2022, wood, aluminum wire, castor wheels, hidden speakers, lights, fabriano paper,grass , dimensions variablewood, aluminum wire, castor wheels, hidden speakers, lights, fabriano paper and grass, dimensions variable.

TI-210 was part of a series of drawings called Nocturnal Body commissioned and supported by the Sharjah Art Foundation for the 15º Edition of Sharjah Biennial, 2023. The drawings were reflecting on the violence of the chemical war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and the cost of freedom from colonialism. The charcoal drawings alludes to the chemical weapons released by the Rhodesian government’s scientific units into water sources, food systems and terrestrial ecosystem

Felix Shumba, TI-210, 2022, charcoal on paper, 43 × 55 in. (109.22 × 139.7 cm).

The work has its starting point in the episode of Cain and Abel, archetypal of fratricide, a subject matter that has been contemplated and dealt with by numerous artists since the Renaissance. Dialoguing with art history and in particular with Peter Paul Rubens' ‘Cain Slaying Abel’, Shumba renders the unfolding of their fight, the progression of time and of bodies in motion by way of four drawings, representing the climax of murdering but also the exercise of power, the vulnerability and the physical submission. In the biblical narrative, God “hears Abel’s blood crying out from the ground”. Shumba’s work is a meditation on how in our history the earth has relentlessly received blood, and how the notion of land is still defined by its own borders.

Felix Shumba, Stars at times in veins, 2024, charcoal on paper, 59 × 47 in. (149.86 × 119.38 cm).

Residents from Zimbabwe

Micha Serraf

Zimbabwe

Tauck Ritzau Innovative Philanthropy

2021

Donate

United States, Mexico

Current Resident: Jan 1, 2025–Jun 30, 2025

The New York Community Trust’s Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund

Studio #303

Artist

Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi

Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi’s work crosses the boundaries of photography, painting, and printmaking. Rooted in the intercultural sensibility he cultivated growing up in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, his practice reflects on histories shaped by the histories operating under the shadows of globalization. His artistic language draws from the Latin American tradition of double entendre, or “doble sentido,” using allegory to imbue materials and images with layered meanings. This approach stems from his enduring fascination with layering knowledge, circulating imagery, and fragmenting compositions.

Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi has exhibited work at haul gallery, New York; Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York; and Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, among others.

cperez.art

Events & Exhibitions

Spring Open Studios 2025

April 25–April 26, 2025

Artists at Work: Simon Liu and Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi

April 1, 2025, 7:30–8:30pm

A view of an artwork installed as an adhesive vinyl mural, cut up in several sections on a commercial window front. The image printed on the vinyl prominently feature saturated figures in varying image resolutions. Some appear digitally pixelated while others have a printed dot pattern when viewed closely. The more readily perceptible figures include a large angel holding the scales of justice in the top left, flying cherubs to the center-right, and palm trees on the right third of the composition.

Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi, Import Ex-port (Venimos a triunfar), 2023, installation view.

A view of the same artwork in the first image, but this time showing the installation as it appears right after sun set. The vinyl become transparent as the light inside the window display become brighter than the sunlight outside. The saturated image becomes more subdued to reveal the framed artwork hanging on the wall behind the window.

Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi, Import Ex-port (Venimos a triunfar), 2023, installation view.

A framed artwork that is built from an underlying lenticular print layer, and a fragemented pixelated image printed on the surface of the plexi glaze. As the viewer moves in front of the work, the lenticular image changes between a sunset style gradient and a more pastoral color scheme featuring a low-resolution rooster in the center.

Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi, Hasta que amanezca, 2023, lenticular print and UV print on plexi, 30¹/₄ × 45¹/₄ in. (76.83 × 114.93 cm).

A framed artwork consisting of thin golden frame containing a predominantly gold spraypainted ground with faded rose branches rendered on the surface, giving way to an ethereal fluorescent orrange area toward the bottom right corner. A yellow and orange religious lenticular print with angels in the background with a figure physically cut out is adhered on top on the spraypainted ground.

Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi, Alabanza al Avance, 2023, found lenticular print, pigment print, spray paint on rag paper, in artist’s frame, 17³/₈ × 22³/₈ in. (44.2 × 56.9 cm).

A framed artwork consisting of a golden molded ornamental picture frame and a gold leafed photo mat with shapes cut out. The main oval opening contains a photo collage of a man in a cowboyhat and gold jewelry holding a gun, his head and hands are cut out to reveal skies from other images underneath. The two heart openings reveal additional small photograph-like vignettes.

Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi, Constellation (Baraja de Oro), 2023, polaroid, pigment print, found lenticular prints, holographic film and imitation gold leaf in artist’s mat and frame, 13¹³/₁₆ × 16¹³/₁₆ in. (35.05 × 42.67 cm).