Vernissage – Unavailable Blog

In our series about art big data, we try to sketch relations and trends in art. We started our series with the following topic: Which academy or school of art produces the most successful artists? We were interested mainly in how many German artists are among the top 1.000 worldwide. Where have these artists studied and with what kind of medium they became successful? The most successful academy of Germany by far is the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with 38 artists in the top 1.000 worldwide.

The global art export champion Germany
German artists are internationally in vogue. The german landscape of art schools produces 148 artist among the top 1.000 worldwide. Among the top 20 there are 6 German artists, namely Gerhard Richter, Joseph Beuys, Sigmar Polke, Thomas Ruff, Georg Baselitz and Rosemarie Trockel. (unter die top 20 künstler kommen gleich 6 dt. künstler)

Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
Studied in Düsseldorf. Düsseldorf. Düsseldorf. Düsseldorf. Thus reads the CV of the currently highest valued artists in Germany. With its graduates Gerhard Richter, Joseph Beuys, Sigmar Polke and Thomas Ruff the Kunstakademie Düseldorf founded in 1773 holds currently the fourth position of the top 3 places in the international ranking of ArtFacts. The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf will do justice to its reputation to be the best German Art Academy, again and again. It has succeeded in to atract attention in making new trends in the formats painting, photography and installation. The Düsseldorf School of Photography (Gursky, Höfer …) is a term of a brand name character linking the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf to significant milestones in art history. The artworks of professors and graduates achieve record prices in the art markets.

HochschulenEuro

Laura Posdziech

Deeply grounded within his family history, the art of Jakub Simcik is the subject of this week’s interview of our Emerging Artist of the Week series.
jakub

How do you describe your art to somebody who has never seen one of your work?
My work is a hybrid form between documentation and fiction in video, photography and text. I am interested in how people shape their own identity through stories. It is a construction, of course. But it is also a way of creating change in one’s own life. It’s a bit similar to how therapy works, where you learn to change your life by changing the way you narrate it.
Another interest of mine is the transfer of identity to objects. In „Kitchen of Happiness“, also one of my earlier works, I retold the story of my mother’s emigration story through her obsession for kitchen machines and utensils: the dishwasher she had in Spain was much better than the one she has now, the fridge had so and so many compartments and was, of course, better than the one she has now. This was her way of talking about the painful decision to move from Spain back to Sweden after her husband lost his job. There is a longing and desire for her Heimat in that kitchen.

Where did you study?
The Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig.

What did University and your professors give to you?
I studied with Prof. Tina Bara and Prof. Alba D’Urbano for seven years. One of the first things that struck me was how unprogrammatic and open minded they were. My professors also taught me a certain minimalist approach: to shed the superfluous, to aim for clarity of thought and expression and to avoid pretentiousness. The other students also had a great influence on me. There were many very talented people studying with me.

What are you currently working on?
An autobiographic video about my father called “Material für einen Prozess.” Many contradictory statements have been made about my father’s military service. He claimed to have patrolled the border area of Bratislava to Austria as a sniper. He also talked about being stationed in Azerbaijan and Angola as a military advisor, training Palestinian militias and being imprisoned in a forced labour camp in Czechoslovakia. The oddity is that he himself left Ostrava for Sweden in 1988. My father was both a refugee and a border guard.
I decided to visit „Archiv bezpečnostních složek“ in Prague to find out more about his stories. I spent a week looking through propaganda films and photographs of the border area without finding anything specific about my own family. On the last day of my research trip I received news that my father had passed away. This was a very strange coincidence.
We hadn’t been in touch for several years. Since I don’t and can’t know much about the real person, I try recapturing what could have been. According to Walter Benjamin there is a utopian potential hidden in the unrealised possibilities of the past. My starting point is the collection of photographs, documents and propaganda films from the archives and my own memories. This method also occupies itself with my father’s schizophrenia, as a result of which he could no longer discern the difference between real and fantasised experiences.
The title has two meanings: on one hand I am making a case against him. On the other hand it is a process to work through his death.

What are your three artists to watch?
Alex Lebus, Nicolás Rupcich and Dorothee Elmiger.

What will your artist career look like in five years?
Any period of longer than a week or two without art has usually thrown me into a state of restlessness. There is no alternative, I have to do art.

Zuspruch der Lebenden Installationsansicht 02
Zuspruch der Lebenden – Installation view

Zuspruch der Lebenden – Installation view

See and read more at Jakub Simcik

Laura Posdziech

Our Emerging Artist of the Week is digital artist Mark Bern

Through code and screens, the Swiss artist creates abstract and pixelated pictures of our reality. We had the chance to talk his working methods and discuss the way computers are taking over the artistic scene.

How do you describe your art to somebody who has never seen one of your work?
Where some see logic and numbers, I see the potential to create entire worlds from a blank computer screen. My work begins as a grid, from which I use a digital colour palette to build layers of abstract compositions. I mostly draw upon inspiration from the natural world, sensing the changes of light and colour as they come into contact with objects, landscapes and people. I capture the reflections, refractions and illusions which manipulate our normative construct of what something should look like.

Where did you study?
Back in the ’90s as a teenager, I used a computer to start my own internet company at the age of 19. I was surrounded by geeks, hackers and other innovators in the field of information technology. Back then computers were not really part of our lives and I was fascinated to create art with new electronic tools.

If you look into the world, you notice everything is a pixel. Now we don’t see it with great technology, like smartphones and LED screens, but to me, the simple pixel, the square at the end is still the basis of everything in the world.

So my study was the rise of the internet.

What are you currently working on?
I’m working with 3D printers and I try to explore a new frontier in 3D technology, art and space. I have some ideas to do installations, such as real-time print with several printers…creating a new dimension.

What are your three artists to watch?
Joo Jaebum, Chemical X and Nick Smith.

What will your artist career look like in five years?
It would be an honour for me to produce an individual and unique art piece for computer or internet entrepreneurs with a huge impact on life and society.

See more of his work at Mark Bern

Kategorie: Vernissage

German Art Academies – Infographic

Jakub Simcik is our Emerging Artist of the Week

Mark Bern – Emerging Artist of the Week