Past Residents

Residents Map

Tobias Pils

Tobias Pils’s working method is characterized by the fact that when beginning a new piece of work he attempts to forget all past works, and engages with a motif. This motif can be anything from a traditional allegory to an abstract rhythm or harmony. His pictorial language as developed in recent years combines expressive elements with geometric structures such as grids, but never quite cuts the link with representation despite its dominant tendency towards abstraction. Intuition, inspiration and individuality are criteria relevant to Pils’s painterly oeuvre, and form the basis of his understanding of painting as a language and means of expression.

Tobias Pils (born 1971 in Linz) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. His selected exhibitions and projects include: Secession, Vienna, 2013; Galerie im Traklhaus, Salzburg, 2012; Jack Hanley Gallery, New York City, 2011; Tenda Gialla, Pogon Jedinstvo, Zagreb, 2010; Beijing Biennale, NAMOC Museum, Beijing; Rezan Has Museum, Istanbul; Gironcoli Museum, Herberstein; Genia Schreiber University Gallery, Tel Aviv, 2008; Tresor BA Kunstforum, Vienna and Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz, 2007. Pils lives and works in Vienna.

Past Resident
2014: Mondriaan Fund

Maura Biava

Maura Biava employs analytic geometry to achieve her artistic ends. Working with a mathematician who translates equations into graphic representations, she searches for forms that resonate or evoke specific emotional or pneumonic responses. She then names that form, combines that form with others, to produce concrete, semantic/poetic objects, drawings, photographs and installations. Artists have long been attracted to the hidden geometries in nature. Biava starts with the geometries and generates strange, new and compelling natural forms.

Maura Biava (born 1970, Reggio Emilia, Italy) is based in Amsterdam. She graduated in 1992 from the Academy of Brera in Milan, then in 1999 from the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam. Biava has exhibited all over the world including Cooling Out, Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel; Going Dutch, Museum of New Art, Pontiac; New Photography from the NetherlandsCornerhouse, Manchester; Chronos & Kairos, Museum Fridericianum, Kassel; Drawing Typologies, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; A’dam & Eve, De Appel, Amsterdam; Museo Zauli, Faenza; Doride/Ultramarine, Photo Museum Amsterdam and On the Edge of Vision,  National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.

Axel Töpfer

Axel Töpfer uses photographs, text and objects to construct imaginary events through an extension of narrative space. The work is structured so that the viewer performs the movement to assemble each story out of its parts. Töpfer continuously searches for instruments of inspiration such as: a late completion about space on Fotodinamismo Futurista by Anton Giulio Bragaglia, Secret Notes by Josef Albers and On Dimension Zero or Why Structural Cinema is Narrative by George Maciunas. He believes magic can be achieved through stuttering and repetition.

Axel Töpfer (born 1977 in Königs Wusterhausen) is Director of the Laboratory for Visibility Hy Brasil since 2012, Co-founder of the network Videoklub (2004) and a member of zeitgenossen since 2000. He studied media art, photography and typography at Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig and sculpture and film at Akademie der Bildenden Künste Vienna. Töpfer works on the island of Hy Brasil and is living in Ulthar.