Past Residents
Past Resident2015: Foundation for a Civil Society
Jana Kapelová
How can an individual change or subvert established societal norms and conventions, or even escape them? This question seems to be the key theme in the work of Jana Kapelová. In her artworks there is an interplay of institutional critique, which reflects her cultural and political involvement in the field of art, and a philosophical concern for the options an individual has in order to bypass or transform a (dysfunctional) social system and thereby arrive at self-realization.
Jana Kapelová (born 1982 in Trnava, Slovakia) graduated in 2006 from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Banská Bystrica and with PhD from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava in 2013. Recent solo shows include Suspicious Free Time, Open gallery, Bratislava; Free Working Time, Gallery of the Good Shepherd, Brno; Own Responsibility, Central Slovakian Gallery, Banská. She is an artist, cultural activist and publicist and a member of the online project Artycok.TV and the initiative Twenty Years after the Velvet Revolution Didn’t Happen. These days she works as an assistant in the Studio of New Media II. at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague.
Events & Exhibitions
Salon: Jana Kapelová and Doruntina Kastrati
February 10, 2015
Jana Kapelová, We are not living in this space, but this space lives in us, 2013-2014, TV, 3:10 min. Courtesy of the artist.
Ingo Mittelstaedt
In an interplay of art historical references and photographic alienation, aesthetical resolution and material presence, Ingo Mittelstaedt uses analogue photographs to explore the abstraction inherent in the medium. At the center of his practice are commonly used objects, nature or art. The artist gallantly oscillates between a documentary approach and staged disarrangements and lets both approaches become indistinct or collide.
Ingo Mittelstaedt (born 1978 in Berlin) studied at HBK Braunschweig, Germany. His works have been exhibited in numerous national and international exhibitions. Mittelstaedt has been awarded the bi-annual art prize of the Kunstverein Hannover. He is currently living and working at Villa Minimo, Hannover. In 2016, he will have solo exhibitions at Kunstverein Hannover and Haus am Waldsee, Berlin.
Ingo Mittelstaedt, Bunte Löcher I, 2012, C-print, 47 × 40 in. (119.38 × 101.6 cm). Courtesy of the artist.
Residents from Germany
Past Resident2015: Mondriaan Fund
Saskia Janssen
Saskia Janssen mixes a variety of media with an anthropological approach in her socially engaged site-specific works. She has collaborated with sailors, nightclub singers, hard drug users, Buddhists, and psychiatric hospital patients and inmates. The outcomes of these collaborations have taken the form of installations, recorded albums, drawings, performances and printed publications. Together with George Korsmit, in 2005 she established The Rainbow Soulclub, an art studio in an Amsterdam shelter for long-term drug users. Since then, they have run a weekly program in the studio, often together with their art students.
Saskia Janssen (born 1968 Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands) lives and works in Amsterdam. She graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Art in The Hague and was a resident at the Rijksakademie in 1996 and 1997. Exhibitions include Diamonds in the Sky, Museum Het Dolhuys, Haarlem; A Glass of Water (Some Objects on the Path to Enlightenment), Ellen de Bruijne PROJECTS, Amsterdam; The Dutch Identity?, Museum De Paviljoens, Almere; and Monument for Invisible Particles, commission for the Bonairian tax building for the Central Government Real Estate Agency. Janssen is represented by Ellen de Bruijne PROJECTS and currently teaches at de Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.
Saskia Janssen, A Hoop for People & a Cinema for Birds, 2010, Wood, paper and children's bikes. Courtesy of the artist.
