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.

Michaela Gleave

Michaela Gleave investigates the physicality of perception, interrogating the systems and structures through which we construct our image of reality. Executed as a series of experiments, her often-temporal works question our relationship to time, matter and space, involving natural phenomena and tricks of perception within the context of the systems and structures that shape contemporary existence. Operating between the spaces of personal experience and global understanding, Gleave’s illusory works hover at the junction between art and science, returning repeatedly to the atmosphere and the space of the sky as the site for her work.  Gleave’s installations, performances and interventions question the relationship we have with our surroundings, allowing us to experience the processes by which we comprehend reality and rethink our presence within it.

Michaela Gleave (born 1980, Alice Springs, Australia) holds a BFA from the University of Tasmania, and an MFA from the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales.  Gleave’s work has been exhibited extensively across Australia, as well as in Germany, Austria, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan and Mexico. Her recent exhibitions include A Day is Longer than a Year, Fremantle Arts Center, 2013; We Are Made of Stardust as part of Art Futures, Hong Kong Art Fair (solo), 2012; A Perfect Day to Chase Tornadoes (White), the Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin, 2010, and Primavera 09, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2009.

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.