Tobias Hantmann, Thilo Heinzmann, Anna Kolodziejska, Elke Silvia Krystufek, René Luckhardt

Press release

Tobias Hantmann

born 1976 in Kempten, lives and works in Berlin

With his works, Tobias Hantmann investigates how an artist arrives at his pictures, what makes a picture a picture and how it differentiates itself from all others. He deals with a problem that has been known within European cultural history literally since antiquity. Since the 1990s, the question behind pictures has been examined on a scientific level by the newly developed field of Visual Studies. This area of research established itself in the context of then incipient “flood of pictures” brought about by the digital media. With this in mind, Hantmann’s art reveals which traditions and conventions are effective in the present day to help one recognize a picture as a picture. In his art, he lays bare the methods he uses to find his forms, and thus also his pictures. (Susanne Buckesfeld)

Exhibitions (selected): 2022 Weltkunstzimmer, Düsseldorf, 2021 3 Sets of Painting, Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck, 2019 Life under your seat, artothek, Cologne, 2018 Staying with the Pictures, Kunsthalle Gießen, Le monde pictorial with René Luckhardt, Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck, 2017 Tradition des Zeigens, Der Marktplatz von Freudenstadt, 2014 Die Methoden, die Gestalt, Kunstverein Oldenburg, New Positions, Art Cologne, 2010 Kornelimünster, Aachen, 2009 Ohne opaque layer each, Konrad Fischer Galerie, Berlin…

Thilo Heinzmann

born 1969 in Frankfurt / Main, lives and works in Berlin

Importantly, what makes Heinzmann's work distinctive, apart from the materials, is its ambition for a kind of universalism: the creation of a language that moves beyond specific or familiar terms of reference to ones which are both fundamental and pan-historic. Fundamental in the way he reconstructs the elements of painting from its bare essentials. Pan-historic in the sense that Heinzmann's work, directly or indirectly, has an awareness of painting from different time periods and cultures, be that pre-Columbian feather painting, pre-historical cave painting, medieval egg tempera, as well as the more expected touchstones such as Klein, Fontana and Palermo. However, Heinzmann keeps all this knowledge and intellectuality firmly in abeyance. He allows his paintings to speak with their own voice - one that is certainly essentialist and minimal yet emotional and joyous too. These new paintings are almost monochromes - white cotton wool on white grounds. (Carl Freedman)

Exhibitions (selected): 2022 Perrotin, Shanghai, China, 2021 Body and Soul, Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck,  dépendance, Brussels, 2019 Pantaloni, Neugerriemschneider, Berlin, 2017 Softside & Softspot in the Garden, Charles Asprey, London, Détours, Hasards & Monsieur Heinzmann, Perrotin, Paris, 2014 Bortolami Gallery, New York, 2013 The Belle Show, Carl Freedman Gallery, London, 2011 Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck, 2008 An Empty Stomach is the Devil’s Playground, Bortolami Gallery, New York…

Anna Kolodziejska

born 1976 in Zywiec, Poland, lives and works in Karlsruhe

In her works, Anna Kolodziejska explores the everyday life’s ins and outs as a field of possibilities. Between the non-necessary and the non-impossible arise poetically virulent absurdities whose restriction to the familiar and whose uncompromising simplicity are inversely proportionate to the astonishment they trigger. (Margrit Brehm)

Exhibitions (selected): 2022 Anna Kolodziejska with Herbert Hinteregger, Galerie am Polylog, Wörgl, 2019 Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck, 2016 Aus der Sammlung, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, 2013 Von Dingen und Menschen, Städtische Galerie Karlsruhe, 2011 Ich sehe was, was du nicht siehst with Patrycja German, Hospitalhof Stuttgart, 2010 Galerie Gisèle Linder, Basel, 2009 Antons Traum, OT Raum für aktuelle Kunst Luzern, Tu zostan, Art Statements, Art Basel, 2007 Ich bleibe zuhause und hüte die Kinder, Bahnwärterhaus Villa Merkel, Esslingen

Elke Silvia Krystufek

born 1970 in Vienna, lives and works in Vienna

From the very beginning, politics has been central to Elke Silvia Krystufek's artistic work. Over the course of more than thirty years, she has developed an oeuvre that focuses on painting and is expanded by drawings, photomontages, mixed media works, installations and videos. Staging and performance run like a common thread throughout her work, structuring entire work blocks both as a narrative and as a research tool. (Johanna Hofleitner)

Exhibitions (selected): 2020 Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck, 2019 30 Years – No Overwiew, Galerie Croy Nielsen, Vienna, 2018 Luxus, Wienerroither & Kohlbacher, Vienna, 2015 Mode, Combinat, Museumsquartier, Vienna, 2014 Harmonie 19, Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna, 2012 Harmonie 20, Haus am Waldsee, Berlin, 2011 Locals and Immigrants, Susanne Vielmetter Gallery, Los Angeles, 2009 Less Male Art, Kestnergesellschaft Hannover, Austrian Pavillon @ Venice Biennale, 2006 Liquid Logic – The height of knowledge and the speed of thought, MAK Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

René Luckhardt

born 1972 in Marburg/Lahn, lives and works in Berlin

Through anamorphosis I not only try to understand the world and its complexities, but to depict how I see and feel it. I think that anamorphosis can give us a direct and immediate access to our inner being. Doing work that the right perspective would ban. Anamorphosis is not a decoration, it is a corrective. Seeing one another, listening to one another (anamorphic or non-anamorphic) is how anamorphosis can help us to anamorph. Anamorphosis can touch people deep inside, directly and purely – and at best, it lasts. Like me, they should want to experience anamorphosis with every fiber of their bodies, to understand it for themselves, to save and preserve it. Anamorphosis can find images for who we are, what we are at our core. Without anamorphosis my work would not exist. (René Luckhardt)

Exhibitions (selected): 2021 Flowers still live, Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck, 2020 Nina Mielcarczyk – public space Galerie, Baumwollspinnerei, Leipzig, Anamorphic or apparently anamorphic testpiece, Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck, 2015 MANufatoRAY, Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck, 2013 Kellerloch Paintings (retrospective), Autocenter, Berlin, 2012 Clown Cube, Bourouina Gallery, Berlin, 2011 KellerKolored KandyKlowns, Wonderloch Kellerland, Los Angeles…