Past Residents
Past Resident2017: Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport of Austria
Sylvia Eckermann and Gerald Nestler
Sylvia Eckermann and Gerald Nestler’s collaborative work is defined by a discursive engagement with form and media. Their work culminates in artistic reflections on our entanglement as individuals in contemporary socioeconomic circumstances. They combine theory and post-disciplinary conversation with digital and physical environments, installations, videos, performances, objects, texts and sound, to explore the derivative condition of contemporary social relations and its financial/economic models, narratives, and processes.
Sylvia Eckermann and Gerald Nestler have been collaborating since the mid-2000s. The have had exhibitions and projects at MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art, 2016; International Symposium on Electronic Art, Hong Kong, 2016; University Museum and Art Gallery, Hong Kong, 2015; Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Vienna, 2015; Kunstraum Innsbruck, Austria, 2013; Kunstraum BERNSTEINER, Vienna, 2012; Austrian Pavilion, EXPO 2010, Shanghai;
4zero Space, Hangzhou, 2010; MKL/Kunsthaus Graz, 2009; Babu Gallery, Shenzhen, 2009; Anni Gallery, Beijing, 2009; Museum Stein, Krems, 2008; Museum Arbeitswelt Steyr, Austria, 2007; Center for Architecture, Innsbruck, 2006; Medi@terra Festival, Athens, 2006; The University of Applied Arts Vienna, 2005; Beijing Cubic Art Center, 2005. They are currently working on the project The Future of Demonstration. Art in the Post-Digital Era, planned for 2017-2018 in Vienna with Maximilian Thoman.
Events & Exhibitions
Fall Open Studios 2016
November 4–November 5, 2016
Sylvia Eckermann and Gerald Nestler, Crystal Math, 2012, 1 channel video installation, 200,000 inches of nylon thread, computer, projector, and 5.1 sound system, 120 × 80 in. (304.8 × 203.2 cm). Sound by Peter Szely and voice by Simon Streather
Sylvia Eckermann and Gerald Nestler, Plastic Trade-off, 2006-2015, 1500 LEDs mounted inside acrylic glass discs, construction and data/power lines, and steel wire, 145 × 155 × 150 in. (368.3 × 393.7 × 381 cm)
Sylvia Eckermann and Gerald Nestler, Breathe My Air - A Paradoxical Conversation Piece, 2008-2011, 3 channel video, 118:14 min
Sylvia Eckermann and Gerald Nestler, The Trend is Your Friend!, 2009, 270° Projection, projectors, cameras, RoboHeads, HeadTrackers, computer, Deskotheque Display System, and Auditory Virtual Environment (AVE), 400 × 400 × 120 in. (1016 × 1016 × 304.8 cm). Sound architecture by Peter Szely
Residents from Austria
Past Resident2016: Edward Steichen Award Luxembourg
Jeff Weber
Jeff Weber’s practice revolves around what he refers to as his attempt to develop a personal epistemology. In 2014, he established the Kunsthalle-Leipzig, a project in the form of a gallery space, which functions as an extension of his photographic practice and as a conceptual frame to invite others to actively participate. Here, the collaborative dimensions of Weber’s practice explore the significance of these encounters with alterity and the social dimension of photography as an epistemological principle. Rather than an isolated object, the photographic image is enmeshed within a matrix of social relations that are interpersonal, artistic, and material.
Jeff Weber graduated from the LaCambre Art School in Brussels in 2010. In 2012, he was a resident at Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, Netherlands. His work has been exhibited internationally at De Appel Arts Center, Amsterdam; Casino – Forum d’Art Contemporain, Luxembourg; Roots & Culture Contemporary Art Center, Chicago; Interfood-Vitrine, Aachen, Germany, amongst others. In 2014, he contributed a selection of photographs to Snejanka Mihaylova’s intervention at Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam, and to her commission for If I Can’t Dance, which culminated in the publication of the book Acoustic Thought in 2015.
Jeff Weber, Absorption (Ina, Helmut and Marc, "Trapping The Gaze"), 2014, FB Print, 7 × 5 in. (17.78 × 12.7 cm)
Jeff Weber, Kritik-im-Gefrierbeutel, 2014, FB Print, 7 × 5 in. (17.78 × 12.7 cm)
Jeff Weber, Romanesco (An approximation of a fractal lying on my kitchen counter), 2014, FB Print, 7 × 5 in. (17.78 × 12.7 cm)
Jeff Weber, Stanley Brouwn’s Card File, 1 Step 1:1, 2014, FB Print, 7 × 5 in. (17.78 × 12.7 cm)
Residents from Germany
Berenice Güttler
Berenice Güttler‘s artworks are studies of identity developed through her activity with textile material. Her drawings function as documentation for this identity. As Seth Siegelaub said, “There is an intimate relationship between textile and society.” This marks it as a medium of particular fascination and endurance. Her work deals with the breadth of influence that textiles have had on art and daily life. Her artworks tell us, unagitatedly, about the emblematic topics of weaving, patterns, and structures in our contemporary world. She treats the agile state of contingency between craft and art easily elegant; dealing with the political history, gender politics and social factors, that are inherent in the material fabric that is both self-referential and universal.
Berenice Güttler (born 1984, Germany) lives and works in Berlin and Hannover. She completed a residency in Galata, Istanbul sponsored by the The Braunschweig University of Art in 2010, contributed to several exhibitions in Europe and is now honored with an artist-in-residency in New York, by the Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung, Saxony.
Berenice Güttler, Untitled, 2014, Batiste cotton, 773/4 × 823/4 in. (197.48 × 210.18 cm). Courtesy of the artist