Application deadline for 2020 HFBK graduates:

18 March 2021

Katja Aufleger (Sculpture, MA, 2013)

Katja Aufleger's (*1983) video works, sculptures and installations combine aesthetic precision, subtle humor and critical observations of (social) contexts and systems. The crux of her works is usually located beyond what is depicted and is realized in a premonition or an imagination that unfolds in the course of perception. It is often triggered by the title of the work, such as "BANG!" for glass flacons whose chambers contain liquids that would cause an explosion if they came together.... (Text: Annette Hans)

Languages: German, Englisch
www.katjaaufleger.com

Than Hussein Clark (Time-based media, MA, 2019)

Than Hussein Clark (*1981) is a visual artist based in London and Glasgow. Clark is Editor at Large for Montez Press and the Artistic Director of The Directors Theatre Writers Theatre, and was a founding member of Villa Design Group. His work exploring the queer present has been shown in institutions across Europe, The United Kingdom, and The United States, and has been featured in Frieze, Artforum, Mousse, FlashArt, The New York Times, La Republica, The Economist, amongst other publications. Upcoming projects include the October Salon at the Belgrade Biennale and the British Art Show 9 touring the UK. He is represented by VI, VII in Oslo, Galerie Crèvecoeur in Paris/ Marseille and Galerie Karin Guenther, Hamburg.

Language: English
https://galerie-karin-guenther.de/artists/than-hussein-clark/images.html

Anna Grath (Sculpture, Diplom, 2014)

Anna Grath (*1983) studied free art at the HFBK Hamburg. One focus of her work is the offensive assembly and connection of functional objects and everyday materials. Like a gardener who breeds new crosses and varieties of extraordinary plants, Anna Grath combines these objects into expansive wall and room works. Principles of breeding, growth as well as education, restriction and dictation are reflected in her constructive and minimalist works.

Languages: German, English
www.annagrath.de

Philip Gaißer (Fotography, Diplom, 2007)

The mostly photographic works of Philip Gaisser (*1980) have something unfathomable about them, because their visual surfaces never offer direct paths to the content dimensions of the images. In his work, image and subject have a relationship to each other that is as loose and lighthearted and yet as close as that of a good glove with one hand. The images continuously shed their skin, pointing rather than depicting their subjects. One can finish quickly, or dig behind the clues laid out in the images. It is this embedding in an ecosystem of signs that is unfathomable; not hermetic, but simply never ending. (Text: Moritz Scheper)

Languages: German, English
www.philipgaisser.de

Annika Kahrs (Time-based media, Diplom, 2012)

In videos, installations and performances, Annika Kahrs (*1984) explores the edges of what we generally call music, asking about the cultural and social function of music, its communicative aspects and its formal nature. Sound as a vehicle of communication - either instrumental or vocal, between humans and animals, between actors on a stage or with the audience are thus often at the center of the works here. Familiar ways of communication, listening habits and behavior patterns are interrupted and have to be found anew. In the resulting shifts, ruptures or misunderstandings, the interactions between expectation and fulfillment, routine and failure in the changing - social, cultural, political - structures of coexistence are examined. Music as language functions as both an outlet and a metaphor.

Languages: German, English
www.annikakahrs.com

FORT - Alberta Niemann (Sculpture, Diplom, 2013)

Alberta Niemann (*1982) is part of the artist duo FORT, founded in 2008 with Jenny Kropp. FORT develops site-specific works in the fields of installation, video and performance. They work with everyday objects that are reconstructed, rearranged or alienated. Many of the created sceneries are reminiscent of abandoned film sets, of which only set pieces remain. In their installations, they play with the perception of the seemingly familiar, create moments of irritation, and thus allow ruptures in our everyday world to become visible. They trace longings and fears that are conveyed through various objects, their composition as well as staging, thus creating an atmosphere that oscillates between eerie and humorous. They frequently negotiate the relationship between presence and absence, whereby the hidden always plays a central role. (Text excerpt: Dr. Nadia Ismail)

Languages: German, English
https://www.sieshoeke.com/de/artists/fort

Lawrence Power (Painting/drawing, Diplom, 2011)

Lawrence Power (*1982) develops his painting from views of urban architecture or geometric everyday objects, such as tables, electricity boxes or lamps in his own studio. In a strongly reduced pictorial language, pictorial space is not created illusionistically, but rather in the juxtaposition of receding, partially transparent backgrounds and raised impasto color surfaces, lines pressed out of the tube and glued-on canvas remnants. In a collage-like manner, he incorporates various compositional elements into his painting as a sculptural surface extension, giving it a material-like directness. By means of subtle interventions and modular extensions, Powers' paintings in his spatial installations duplicate and comment on the surfaces of the elements that can be found and declare the space itself to be the canvas, creating a constant interplay with the two-dimensionality of the painting and the three-dimensionality of the spaces that refer to it.

Languages: German, English, French
www.lawrencepower.com

Sung Tieu (Sculpture, BA, 2013)

The artistic practice of Sung Tieu (*1987) encompasses a variety of media, including installation, sound, video, sculpture, photography, performance, and public interventions. Often based on historical-political studies, her work addresses issues of both national and transnational historiography. In doing so, she analyzes political, bureaucratic and social power relations as well as their historical preconditions, which she often translates into sculptural and sound installations. Last but not least, her work deals with life in the diaspora and the accompanying psychological effects.

Languages: German, English

www.sungtieu.com

Frieda Toranzo Jaeger (Painting/drawing, MA, 2019)

Frieda Toranzo Jaeger (Mexico, *1988) uses painting to explore ideas of hybridity, queer sexuality, and autonomy. Rejecting concerns about technology and virtuosity, Toranzo Jaeger's interest in painting is both conceptual and political. Her recent work draws on the technological advances of the automobile, a symbol, from a historical perspective, of everyday alienation, speed, and violence. In her painting, Toranzo Jaeger frequently breaks down the isolated panel painting, introducing queer feminine connotations techniques and motifs into a patriarchal sphere.

Languages: German, English, Spanish
www.galeriebarbaraweiss.de/artists/friede-torenzo-jaeger/

Stefan Vogel (Painting, Diplom, 2012)

Stefan Vogel (*1981) brings drawing, writing and forms into a dense unity. In often multi-part wall works and room-filling installations, he weaves organic and artificial into fragile webs of relationships. Something lies still - but restlessness crystallizes within. Chaos and order, like suffering and thriving, spring from the same possibility. Only time and logic change, again and again and anew. The specific material and color aesthetics of Vogel's works are based on the use of everyday objects, natural materials and building materials. Under rhythmic repetition of essential elements of form, color and substance, decay and chance inspire the anarchy of things and words. On one side proliferation, on the other structure, concentration and reduction. With the help of this complementary principle, Vogel works on a visual equivalent of complex relationships. (Text: Anka Ziefer)

Languages: German, English

www.jahnundjahn.com/de/artists/stefan-vogel/work