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
Tuomas A. Laitinen
Tuomas A. Laitinen is an artist whose work fuses moving image, 3D animation, light, sound, installations and spatial interventions. His artworks are loaded with references ranging from ancient tragedies to philosophy to speculative fiction to experimental music to architectural history to contemporary media culture. More recently, Laitinen has conducted in-depth research on the global circulation of raw materials, namely copper, to address the micro and macro processes and concerns that inform contemporary reality. Laitinen’s art exposes the connections and negotiates between private and public, and poetic and political.
Tuomas A. Laitinen graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki in 2008. Laitinen has participated in exhibitions and festivals throughout the world including the Bucharest Biennale; Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul; SADE LA Gallery, Los Angeles; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai; Moving Image New York 2016; Mildura Palimpsest Biennale, Australia, 2015; and the 5th Cairo Video Festival, 2013. His recent major solo exhibition Fundamental Matter was held at EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Finland in 2014-2015. In 2013, Laitinen was awarded the first Fine Arts Academy of Finland’s award for emerging Finnish artists.
Events & Exhibitions
Fall Open Studios 2016
November 4–November 5, 2016
Tuomas A. Laitinen, Conductor, 2014, Video, 4 channels, 29 min
Tuomas A. Laitinen, Azure Dunes (for J.G. Ballard), 2015, Video, 5 min
Tuomas A. Laitinen, The Powder of Sympathy, 2015, Video, 8:36 min
Tuomas A. Laitinen, Sensory Adaptation Devices, 2015, Multiple, Dimensions variable. Courtesy of SADE LA Gallery
Tuomas A. Laitinen, A Room for You, 2015, Light installation, Dimension variable
Residents from Finland
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
