THE ARTISTS | Anne Nissen, Hannover

Anne Nissen

Anne Nissen, born in 1966 in Flensburg, studied Liberal Arts in Stuttgart and Hannover. She has also received many international study grants and attends international Master Classes. Anne Nissen lives and works in Hannover.

Anne Nissens work begins with plastic and graphic works: surreal pencil drawings, grotesque plastic works and installations are her first works. For two centruries she has been working intensively with video equipment. She has created large video installations as well as mono and polychrome video prints which deal with the subject of human life phases: metamorphosis and transformation, experiences and memories between birth and death.

THE ARTISTS | Lukáš Lerch, Ostrov nad Ohři

Lukáš Lerch

 

Lukáš Lerch was born in 1987 and grew up during the time of unrest between two systems. This shows itself in his artistic work. He completed studies in Psychology and Art Education at the Western Bohemian University in Pilsen. Lukáš Lerch lives and works as an Art Educator for people of various ages in Ostrov nad Ohři.

 

 

For the “Water Games”, the artist has submitted an installation which incorporates ponds located in different places just outside Wunsiedel.

He creates an unnatural barrier in the observer’s field of vision that the observer readily accepts. Reflections echo cyclic interlacing. Water and materialism create an area of tension. The observer becomes involved in the piece just as does the surrounding landscape.

THE ARTISTS | Rainer Fest, Leipzig

Rainer Fest

 

Rainer Fest, born in 1953, studied at the Jurva School of Arts and Crafts in Finland from 1975 to 1981. He also studied in Germany and in Spain. His sculptures have been displayed in international exhibitions since 1986 and are included in both public and private collections.  Many of his works can be viewed in public spaces. His artistic body of work has received many grants both in Germany and abroad.

The central theme of Rainer Fest’s work is the bi-lateral visualisation of objects and the revelation of a perspective that shows these two versions as parts of a whole.

For Rainer Fest it is not only aesthetics that matter, but also a philosophical perspective that should almost offer itself to an attentive viewer. The significance of water becomes then particularly important. “Connection” is a central theme that runs through Fest’s art.

He works primiarily with things that cannot come together, he seeks the space between contradictions, the form of things that are invisible, hidden oneness, such as negative and positive, material and spiritual, here and beyond, life and death.

The observer is invited to investigate individual elements and to experience associations among them that would most likely be overlooked and ignored.

THE ARTISTS | Jeff Beer, Gumpen

Jeff Beer (Foto: Wolfgang Zielonkowski)

 

Jeff Beer, born in 1952 in Mitterteich in the Upper Palatinate region, studied Composition, Percussion instruments and Piano at the College for Music in Würzburg. After his examinations and Master Class, he studied in Paris and in New York. Jeff Beer’s works have won numerous awards, including a double stipend from the German National Academic Foundation, the Bavarian State Award for Music and Visual Arts, and an award from the Xaver Fuhr Foundation in Regensburg.

Jeff Beer first concentrated on painting. Music followed soon afterwards. His expression pallet was thus expanded, and led to a unique, complex body of work that spans music, painting, drawing, wood sculpting, photography and language. This body constantly redefines itself and often manifests itself in cyclic complexes. The most intriguing aspects of Beers multi-facetedness could include his variety, the cross-pollination of his methods and experiences, his multi-media perspective that leads to surprising results, refreshing openings, cross-associations and experiences.

He has been working with the topic of water for many years. His studio is on the Waldnaab River, to which he has developed a special relationship. He expresses this in his drawings and texts, but particularly in his photography, with the continuous observation of living and perception spaces.

THE ARTISTS | Hannes Neubauer, Leipzig

Hannes Neubauer

 

Hannes Neubauer, born in 1979 in Marktredwitz, has been travelling internationally as a steel sculptor for many years. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Design at the College for Recognized Sciences and Arts in Hildesheim and completed a master’s program titled “Art in public places and new artistic strategies” (MfA) at the Bauhaus University in Weimar and in Belo Horizonte in Brazil.

He also often works abroad: in 2017 he was part of numerous sea rescues on the coast of Libya. He is distinguished as the “Kultur- und Kreativpilot Deutschland 2011.”

Water holds a special meaning for Hanne Neubauer, less in a artistic, poetic way, but more from a socio-political perspective, something real and essential. A video made during his sea rescue assignment at the Libyan coast can be seen as an installation and could give the viewer goosebumps.

THE ARTISTS | Ilse Dreher, Dreieich

Ilse Dreher

 

Ilse Dreher, born in 1950 in Dreieichenhain, is an independent artist, photographer, designer and author of theatrical works. She completed studies in Photography at the School of Photography in Hamburg Rotherbaum and studied at the College of Design in Offenbach/Main. Ilse Dreher lives and works in Dreieichenhain.

 

Since the beginning of the 1990s, Ilse Dreher has dealt with the idea of water. All different states of water show up in Ilse Dreher’s art like they do in all the different light settings water can be observed in. It is water’s fluidity, its unfixed nature, its flow, the way it is always changing, its perpetual transformation that inpires and motivates her. This is why she incoporates air, water, light and earth into her work. Dreher brings together both the archaic and the anarchic.

The artist both plays and allows one to play, be it through overdimensional photographs, collages or installations in the wild outdoors, she uses whatever she needs to get a certain expression across. In Wunsiedel she has two installations on display.

THE ARTISTS | Roman Woerndl, Berg

Roman Woerndl

 

Roman Woerndl, born in 1957 in Prien am Chiemsee, studied Architecture at Rosenheim College in 1986. From then, he worked as an independent sculptor in Munich. 2010/11 and 2012/13 he was an Artist in Residence in Yogayakarta in Indonesia. Roman Woerndl lives and works in Berg am Starnberger See.

 

Roman Woerndl’s sculptures often reflect dissonance with the landscape from which they originate: a hill at the east bank of the Starnberger Lake. His works seem to force the landscape into being depicted by geometric patterns. The observer seems to get the impression that the way we see nature is not “natural” but rather a product of culture.

Roman Woerndl’s installations and video projects are an expression of his theoretical grappling with topics such as the hubris of human beings.

The artist has two video installations on display in Wunsiedel as well as a kinetic object.

THE ARTISTS | Gilbert Geister, Köln

Gilbert Geister

 

Gilbert Geister, born in 1973 in Bochum, studied Fine Arts at the College of Arts in Berlin from 1996-2000. Afterwards he received teaching appointments at the Protestant University of Applied Sciences and at the Alanus College in Alfter. In 2014 he won the Art Award from the Association of German Architects in Dortmund.

Gilbert Geister lives and works in Cologne.

 

Gilbert Geister presently concentrates on Object Painting and Drawing, with emphasis on portraits. A traditional portrait, however, becomes revised and modified through both focused and deliberate elemental ommisions, removal of parts of the medium, or through the use of LEDs, lumenescent material or kinetic elements.

Geister’s connection to painting is maintained through such projects as painting through the use of remote-controlled helicopters, machines, or balloons, which, like other spatially-concerned installations, he builds himself.

Geister incorporates audience participation in interactive projects such as his turf slingshot, a line generator, and a cable car.

THE ARTISTS | Feng Lu, Berlin

Feng Lu

 

Feng Lu was born in 1979 in the Peoples’ Republic of China. Between 1995 and 2007, he studied visual and graphic arts in Harbin/China, Berlin, Mainz, and Halle. He also successfully completed studies at the University of Arts in Berlin with distinction. Feng Lu lives and works in Berlin.

 

 

Contextual shifts, metamorphoses, and transferrals of meaning are all Feng Lu’s specialty. No social topic is spared when he distorts human actions with angry irony. Feng Lu does not create narrations but combines fragments of situations, memories, and contemporary issues into a critical perspective on society and on being human.

His plastic figures, handmade to perfection, are witty and colorful, playful and frivolous. At the same time, he deals with a variety of motifs and pictures which are not abstract, but allow themselves to be seen from several perspectives. He combines contradictions into singularities that seem self-evident and defies natural science by crossing dimensions or cloning strange creatures.

Feng Lu is a painter as well as a sculptor and ingeniously combines both disciplines in plastic, which he creates out of clay and epoxy resin.