Past Residents

Past Resident
2026: Federal Ministry of Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport Republic of Austria

Artist

Bernd Oppl

Bernd Oppl’s works, whether in the form of models, photographs, sound installations, or moving image works as projections and on displays, deal with the uncertainty of perception in a world where the visible and audible are always material and virtual at the same time. He situates the world mostly in an uncanny intermediate space. Present and absent, tangible and ephemeral, external and internalized, both all-encompassing and radically confined.

Bernd Oppl has exhibited work at Georgia Museum of Art, Greece; Greater Taipei Biennial, Taiwan; and Kunstraum Dornbirn, Austria, among others.

Events & Exhibitions

Artists at Work: Bernd Oppl in Conversation with Mara Mills

April 21, 2026, 6:30–7:30pm

2026 Spring Open Studios

April 17–April 18, 2026

Artists at Work: Film Screening with Jade Kallio, Bernd Oppl, Marie-Andrée Pellerin, and Gaspar Willmann

January 27, 2026, 6:00–7:30pm

Meander: In a room with grey floor and white walls, there is a sound sculpture in which a Reel-To-Reel Tape Machine is integrated into a trapezoidal prism structure. Gravity causes the tape, emerging from the machine, to flow along a slanted incline into a bottle-shaped, flat, and luminous container made of Plexiglas. Within this form, the tape winds and gathers in meandering loops. In this way, a kind of drawing is created from the tape itself.

Bernd Oppl, Meander, 2025, MDF, metal, electronics, speaker, LED light, NAGRA tape, machine and electronics, 19¹¹/₁₆ × 43⁵/₁₆ × 8⁷/₈ in. (50.04 × 109.98 × 22.61 cm).

Hidden Rooms: In a large former industrial and manufacturing hall, now used as an art space, there is a black wooden structure which reminds one on a shed. It is made of black painted beams and boards; the skeletal structure is only partially enclosed by walls, with some areas open. Small black boxes are mounted on the walls, both inside and outside, each with the possibility to look inside of them. In the center of the structure stands a man, whose gaze is directed at a video inside the structure. On the screen, an abstract image with white shape is visible, resembling the room structure in which the man stands. In the center of the structure, there is also a trapezoidal object.

Bernd Oppl, Hidden Rooms, 2019, wood, steel, PVC, aluminium, mirror, glass, video camera, electric motors, HD videoprojection and speakers, 472 × 189 × 197 in. (1198.88 × 480.06 × 500.38 cm).

I looked around the internet: A black box protrudes from a wall. Through an opening in the box, a miniature room can be seen, containing three computer workstations. On the three desktop screens, screensaver animations of passing stars are running. The workstations are placed on a table, and are semi partitioned. Chairs are positioned in front of the workstations. To the right of the table, there is a vending machine.

Bernd Oppl, I looked around the Internet, 2019, nylon, MDF, LCD display, GIF animation, single-board computer, various electronics, 17¹¹/₁₆ × 13¹³/₁₆ × 19¹¹/₁₆ in. (44.96 × 35.05 × 50.04 cm).

No Future: In a forest clearing, a room consisting of two walls and a concrete floor is visible. One wall has a closed door with a clock above it that has no face or hands, only a mirrored surface. On the other wall, an empty poster frame is mounted. In front of this wall stands a bench with five gray plastic aluminum seats. The arrangement resembles a waiting room but feels out of place in the middle of the forest. A camera in a weatherproof box is positioned in front of the room, aimed directly at it.

Bernd Oppl, No Future, 2020, concrete, steel, PVC, aluminium, acrylic glass, glass and video camera, 118¹/₈ × 157¹/₂ × 141¹¹/₁₆ in. (299.97 × 400.05 × 359.92 cm).

Substanzaufnahmen: Several MDF boxes, three brown and one black, housing architectural models are mounted onto a three-dimensional metal structure and connected by cables. Some of the boxes containing the architectural models show black stains on their exterior surfaces. A monitor is also installed within the structure, positioned centrally at eye level between the boxes, displaying a still image from a video. The still image shows a white room with skylights and three doors. From the doors, a black liquid flows and collects in the center of the room.

Bernd Oppl, Substanzaufnahmen, 2017, MDF, various electronics, monitor HD Video Loop (10min 16/9), 35³/₈ × 66⁷/₈ × 35³/₈ in. (89.92 × 169.93 × 89.92 cm).

Residents from Austria

Robert Gabris

Austria, Slovakia

Federal Ministry of Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport Republic of Austria

Studio #218

Michaela Payer and Martin Gabriel

Austria

Federal Ministry of Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport Republic of Austria

Studio #212

Elisabeth Molin

Denmark, United Kingdom, Austria

Danish Arts Foundation

2026

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Denmark

Past Resident
2026: Danish Arts Foundation

Artist

Tore Hallas

Tore Hallas works across themes of fatness and queerness, both as intertwined identities, alongside religious ontologies and intention, mental health, and photographic and cinematographic reflection as both subject and method. His practice primarily engages video, photography, and text, and extends into teaching. Undercurrents throughout his work include economic, structural, and interpersonal forms of oppression; personal narrative; and the intersectional nature of violence and positionality. Travel also figures prominently, understood both as physical displacement and as symbolic quest, as does the relationship between the world and the othered body and mind.

Tore Hallas has exhibited work at KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art, Germany; Fuglsang Kunstmuseum, Denmark; and ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark, among others.

Events & Exhibitions

Artists at Work: Tore Hallas in Conversation with Evan Garza

May 12, 2026, 6:30–7:30pm

2026 Spring Open Studios

April 17–April 18, 2026

‘…Closer to God…’ is both an explicit and intimate visual study of the discourses that determine which bodies are deemed desirable and worthy of admiration in a sexualised economy. In a stylised tablaeu, lit like renaissance paintings, the camera examines bodies frozen in embrace and desire. Poetically disseminating knowledge about the discrimination of fat people as it relates to career and financial opportunities The interweaving of explicit intimate imagery and scientific research reveals discourses judging which bodies are deemed worthy of sexualization and the financial consequences that follows.

Tore Hallas, YOU ARE CLOSER TO GOD WHEN YOU DO NOT INDULGE, 2024, video, 22 min.

‘And going after strange flesh’ is a fragment from a passage in the Bible that describes the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah surrendering to fornication and, according to some accounts, possibly homosexual relations. Tore Hallas takes this reading of the passage as the premise for his two-screen film piece that explores questions of shame in relation to male homosexuality and fatness. Working with simplified imagery in the style of contemporary portraiture and the travelogue, Hallas scrutinises the intersection of male howmosexuality, race and fatness. In a heteronormative culture, both homosexuality and fatness are stigmatised, and the latter is equally stigmatised in mainstream gay culture. Hallas sets out on his search for an understanding of this particular shaming in the context of the religiously loaded location of the ancient city of Sodom. The footage on one screen presents what resembles a study of the sexualised representations of fat gay men and the men who desire them, while on the other we see a road movie-like search for what is said to be the ruins of Sodom. Images and soundtrack fetishize and deconstruct both the body and the landscape, as well as their readings and markings through feelings of shame. The title refers to homosexual sexual desire or desire for otherness, which, in the context of the scripture, can be seen as a desire for the divine and has also been interpreted as lust for angelic figures. Hallas approaches these myths, claims and uncertainties about religious meaning and historical events as storytelling tools, detourning them towards the personal and sexualised struggles of the ideological everyday.

Tore Hallas, AND GOING AFTER STRANGE FLESH (THEIR GOD IS THEIR BELLY, AND THEY GLORY IN THEIR SHAME, WITH MINDS SET ON EARTHLY THINGS), 2019, video, 13 min.

Tore Hallas, (Untitled), 2023, lenticular print, 40 × 28 in. (101.6 × 71.12 cm).

Uploaded video is documentation of exhibited lenticular print. Lenticular printing is a technology in which lenticular lenses are used to produce printed images with an illusion of the ability to change or move as they are viewed from different angles.

Tore Hallas, (Untitled), 2024, sculpture, plastic filament and 3D print.

On a narrow pedestal in the middle of the room rests a dubious copy of a silver coin. The coin is bought online and is a souvenir of the kind that tourists drag home from Athens. In Greek mythology, the deceased pay a ferryman to ferry them across the river to the realm of the dead, and the coin thus represents the successful transition between life and death. A memento mori, that is, or a way to wish the dying a good journey, but an inadequate, sarcastic one, mass-produced in nickel and sold on one of the internet’s more dubious webshops. ‘An Empty Container Of’ is based on a personal grieving process, but unfolds it into a universal study of the relationship between photography and transience, fatness and pathologization. Throughout the past year’s pandemic, existentialist questions of illness and death have become present for many of us. But for one who lives in a fat body, the pathologization is constant; the fat body is spoken of as a container for the life, it ends up suffocating. The exhibition centers around a series of photographs called Thanatos, who in Greek mythology is the personification of death, but is also a freudian term for a death drive, which compels humans to engage in self-destuctive acts. Being fat is often seen as such, as a walking time-bomb of self-inflicted death. Walking down the street, the fat person advertises death. This deems a fat persons death less tragic and more acceptable. But this is something projected on the fat body, rather than something inherent in it. The projection of a death drive.

Tore Hallas, Thanatos, 2021, inkjet prints, frames, podiums and fabric.

Residents from Denmark

Aske Thiberg

Sweden, Denmark

Danish Arts Foundation

Studio #207

Elisabeth Molin

Denmark, United Kingdom, Austria

Danish Arts Foundation

2026

Filip Vest

Denmark

Danish Arts Foundation

2026

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Sweden

Past Resident
2026: IASPIS - The Swedish Arts Grants Committee's International Programme for Visual Artists

Artist

Mats Hjelm

Mats Hjelm is a Stockholm-based artist working with large-scale video installations, documentary film, and public multimedia artworks. His practice explores the intersection of art, social justice, and personal and political narratives, moving fluidly between video installation and documentary traditions. He has worked extensively in Europe, West Africa, South Africa, North Africa, the United States, Brazil, and India. Hjelm also teaches specialized courses in contemporary art and is an experienced cinematographer, colorist, programmer, and video installation specialist.

Mats Hjelm has exhibited work at Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM), Rio de Janeiro; Walker Art Center, Minnesota; and Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, among others.