Artists and Curator

Curator
 
Juan Xu (China/Germany)
 
Juan Xu was born in Chengdu, China and studied in Germany. She is an independent curator, art critic, and one of the founders of the first Chinese feminist group "Bald Girls,” which has received great attention in China and abroad in recent years. She is also founder of PerformanceDay Wiesbaden /Frankfurt and Chairman of Sino-German Art and Cultural Exchange Association IO Cultural Network. Juan Xu currently lives and works in Germany and China, primarily Shanghai.
 
 Artists: 

Gao Brothers (China/USA)
 
The Gao Brothers are a pair of actual artist brothers based in Beijing, China. The duo is composed of Gao Zhen (born in Jinan, China 1956) and Gao Qiang (born in Jinan, China 1962). They have been collaborating on installation, performance, sculpture, photography works, and writing since the mid 1980s. Some of their works were published in “A History Of Chinese Modern Art,” “China Avant-garde Photography, “The Best Photography of China,” and many more. Additionally, their pieces have been held in private and public museum collections around the world, featured by the likes of Steven Cohen, Uli Sigg, Charles Saatchi, Jin Hongwei, China National Museum, Centre Georges Pompidou, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Princeton University Art Museum, Kemper Museum Of Contemporary Art, and much more.
 
Shen Shaomin (Australia/China)
 
Originally born in 1956 in Heilongjiang province, China 1956, Shen Shaomin now lives and works in Beijing, Guangzhou, and Sydney, Australia. As an artist adept at many fields of artistic creation, Shen’s works are mainly composed of installations, videos, documentaries, and conceptual paintings. His art has been collected and coveted by many galleries, museums, foundations, and private collections around the world. Additionally, Shen has presented works across the U.S., Europe, China, and Australia, and has been featured at the 17th Biennale of Sydney 2010, the first Kiev Biennial 2012, Liverpool Biennial 2006, Busan Biennial 2012,  Guangzhou Triennial 2012, and the Shanghai Biennale 2012.
 
Li Yongzheng (China)
 
Born in Bazhong, Sichuan Province, China 1971. Li Yongzheng pursued a higher education at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute’s Department of Oil Painting from 1989 to 1991. In 1994, he graduated from the Department of Fine Arts at China Southwest University (formerly Southwest Normal University). From 1998 to 2000, he attended workshops at the Department of Sociology of Sichuan University while simultaneously living and working in Chengdu, Sichuan. His most recent exhibitions include: Hello at MOCA Chengdu in 2017, Death, I’ve Dreamed of You for Many Years at TEDA Contemporary Art Museum Tianjin in 2015, Confronting Anitya–Oriental Experience in Contemporary Art at the 55th Venice Art Biennale 2013, and Voice of the Unseen at the 55th Venice Art Biennale 2013.
 
Cao Kai (China)
 
Cao Kai is an artist, filmmaker, and independent curator who graduated from Nanjing Academy of the arts in 1992. As an artist, Kai plunged into the field of contemporary art in 1994 and used video, photography, and installation as his main medium of expression. Now he is an important video artist and experimental filmmaker in China. As an independent curator, he has organized and curated China’s Independent Film Festival since 2003 and has also participated in various intercontinental art projects relating to Chinese independent films, experimental films, and video art in East Asia, North America, and Europe. His cannon includes criticism, creation, historical research, exhibitions, and education for the public through various experimental films, video art, documentary film making, new media, and digital art.
 
Xiao Lu (China)
Born in 1962, Xiao Lu is a Chinese artist who primarily works with installation art and video art. She rose to fame in 1989 with her work Dialogue displayed at the China Avant-Garde Exhibition. Just two hours after the exhibition opened, Xiao Lu pulled out a gun and shot her own work, causing an uproar and the exhibition to immediately close. When the Tiananmen Square massacre occurred four months later, her actions were heavily politicized and referred to as “the first gunshots of Tiananmen.”
 
Jiny Lan (China/Germany)
Originally born in Liaoning province, China, Jiny Lan now lives and works in Germany. Her works are mainly composed of conceptual paintings, performances, installations, and videos. Her art has been displayed and collected by a great many international museums, galleries, foundations, and private collections. 
 
Duan Ying Mei (China/Germany)
Born in Daqing, China, Duan Ying Mei studied at HBK Braunschweig, Germany. Where she is currently located. Since 2000, her concentration has been on creating and researching performance art. Her personal performances often incorporate sound, video, and installation art. Besides her solo projects, Duan Ying Mei consistently collaborates with people from different cultures, ages, and areas of life around the world. 
 
Liu Xue (China/Germany)
Originally from China, Liu Xue is currently a freelance artist who lives and works in Frankfurt. After completing his degree in 2010 at the Städelschule Frankfurt, he now focuses on painting, stage performance, and costume design, and is a member of the theater performance group “Taheter Unkst.”
 
Dirk Baumanns (Germany)
Born in 1980 in Offenbach, Germany, Dirk Bauhmanns earned his diploma from the Academy of Art and Design Offenbach in 2012 with Prof. Adam Jankowski (painting) and Prof. Mariola Brillowska (performance). He was a recipient of the 2009 Johannes-Mosbach foundation scholarship. Dirk Baumanns works with a variety of media, including performance, painting, and video, and his pieces have been exhibited in many important art galleries and museums in Sweden, France, Germany, Italy and China. He is one of the most active artists in the Rhein Main Region, and currently lives and works in Frankfurt, Germany.
 
Peter Braunholz (Germany)
 
Peter Braunholz has studied music, film history antheory, and German philosophy, and this diverse academic background informs his art. Currently, he is a visual artist interested in impressions of reality that may appear unreal, manipulated, or staged; but are actually a part of our surroundings. In doing so, Peter Braunholz explores the immaterial quality of objects and spaces and attempts to discern their very essence. He initially worked as an author, graphic designer, and photographer for various industrial firms and publishers, including Societäts-Verlag (F.A.Z.). Since 1999, his concentration has primarily been on photographic art. His award-winning works have been shown worldwide and featured institutions such as the Louvre, Paris and Arsenale, Venice. In 2017, Kehrer Publishing released the monograph book, “Photographic Realities” about his work.
 
Stefan Stichler (Germany)
 
Stefan Stichler is based in Frankfurt, Germany but his works are exhibited internationally and are represented by numerous art collections. His pieces are generally comprised of oversized oil paintings, which he sees as tools- a way of making “pause-button” moments visible that seem to flash in his mind for a fraction of a second and can be found in the street at any given time. Although they appear common and unspectacular on first view, Stefan’s works open up a deeper level of philosophical questions concerned with the hidden meaning of modern, urban beings. Additionally, his sculptures often use mirrors as a main theme to complete his idea of different perceptions, and the difficulty in distinguishing viewpoints. 
 
 
Andreas Rohrbach (Germany)
Andras Rohrbach is a sculptor based out of Frankfurt, Germany. After completing his classical stone sculptor training at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main with Ulrich Rückriem, Stephan Balkenhol, Ludger Gerdes, and Georg Herold, Rohrbach worked as a direct assistant of Ilja Kabakov and later finished his master’s studies with Franz West. Andreas Rohrbach brings ideas and material together in a sensual way that attempts to create free spaces in which people can unfold and find meaningful connections with. One another. Rohrbach processes different materials with his sculptures, which are partly created for certain places. In the context of his work, they merge into to a specific cosmos. The main topic of his work is the question, possibility, and configurability of human self-expression in such an organized world.
 
 
Thomas Vinson (Germany)
 
Born in 1970 in Paris, France. Since 2013, Thomas has been working as a guest lecturer of sculpture at the Justus-Liebig Universität and at the Technischen Hochschule Mittelhessen (THM) department of architecture, Giessen, Germany. His work deals with three dimensionality, either with the space or the sculptures he creates. Since 2007, Thomas has also been a curator at Kunstturm Mücke (KTM), Mücke, Germany. From 1997-1999, Thomas studied with Professor George Smith at Rice University, U.S. and his work has been displayed in: Brazil, France, Germany, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, and the U.S. Collections: Ernst & Young, Frankfurt, Germany Emmanuel – Hoffmann Stiftung, Basel, Switzerland.[MOU1] 
 
Kevin Clark (France, USA, Germany)
 
Born in New York, Clark studied Sculpture at Cooper Union New York with Hans Haacke. Active in Europe since 1976 and China since 2012, he is known for experimental portrait projects including The Red Couch, A Portrait of America (1984) and early and continuing DNA portraits since 1988. The first automated DNA Sequence was made with Clarke's blood as an art project. Museum exhibitions include Museum Wiesbaden Städel Frankfurt, Schirn Frankfurt, MOMA N.Y., Brooklyn Museum N.Y., CAFA Beijing, Marciana Venice, and Documenta 6 Kassel. Clarke currently lives and works in both SW France and Frankfurt, Germany.
 
CrocodilePOWER (Russia) 
 
CrocodilePOWER is a group founded in 2011 by two Russian artists: Peter Goloshchapov (born in Moscow) and Oksana Simatova (born in Odincovo). Both are graduates of Stroganov Moscow State University of Arts and Industry. In 2012, they completed an internship at the Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design in London. Working in a group has become a new creative experience for both of them. Their primary theme is studying today’s world and the place mankind has in it. CrocodilePOWER creates mythologies somewhere between fantasy and reality, technology and nature. They currently live and work in Moscow, Russia.
 
Sándor Szász (Hungary)
Born in Transylvania, Romania in 1976. Szász works in different mediums and tends to tackle social issues with his work, from painting to installations, photography, and videos. Recollection is decisive for him, a formative force on identity in the development of personality that consequently shapes the world. Consequently, his work is a manifestation of his individual memories, in which he incorporates images and objects from both the past as well as the present in order to create a surreal vision when placed within a distinct context. Szász’s aim is to draw attention to future consequences that may result from a series of decisions disregarding social reality. His works have been shown in several museums in China, Germany, Hungary, and Romania. 
 
Palu Abadia (Columbia/USA)
Palu Abadia is a Colombian-born filmmaker and visual artist based in Brooklyn, N.Y. She has worked as a cinematographer and video editor for different projects, including short and long documentaries. In 2016, she completed her first film, “Monologues in the Artist’s Studio,” and it was awarded best documentary for architecture and design. She is currently working on her second film, "Nowhere to Fall,” a story developed between New York and Colombia about music, tradition, displacement, and women empowerment. She has exhibited her work in festivals, galleries, and schools in the U.S. and South America, and her personal work ranges from experimental video to stop motion animation and traditional photography.
Javier Bernal-Arevalo(Colombia/Poland)
 Javier studied his BFA in Tadeo University, Colombia and then earned an MA of Fine Arts at Central Saint Martins, London. Having extensively traveled throughout his youth, Bernal created a feeling of rootlessness that would later on affect his life and his practice as an artist. His primary themes include loss of cultural identity and the impossibility of belonging in a world that shrinks under the burden of technological prowess. He uses media like cinema, animation, and painting to evoke questions of nostalgia in the post-conceptual era, and to question identity in the internet realm. He has exhibited his work in Colombia, Poland, England, and Switzerland, amongst others. He currently works and lives in Gdansk, Poland.
 
David Medina (Colombia/Venezuela/USA/UK)
 
David Medina is a computer engineer with a master’s in Fine and Visual Arts. In 2018 he was selected as one of the emerging artists in Colombia at the Nuevos Nombres exhibition by Banco de la República. His work dwells within the intersection of technology and aesthetics and uses language, sound, and generative algorithms as tools of enquiry. The politics of interface, translation as expressive medium, and language as form are some of the themes Medina likes to explore using video, performance, print, and other media. David Medina currently works between Florence, London, and his hometown of Bogotá, Columbia.
 
Sandra Miranda Pattin (Colombia/Italy)
 
Sandra is a Colombian artist with strong Italian origins working mainly in installation and performance with a strong interest in the body as a transformation territory. She has been widely exhibited in Europe, Asia, and South America in galleries, museums, biennales, and art festivals. She has also won several awards, such as first prize for photography by Collezione Camera di Commercio di Mantova, Italy and has also been nominated for the Sara Modiano prize, among others. Her artworks are part of public and various private collections in Italy, USA, and Colombia. She is currently working within experimental sound art in Florence, Italy.
 
 
 
Ben Shalom David (Israel)
Ben Shalom David was born in 1984 in Tel Aviv, Israel. He began his photography studies in high school, where for the first time he was exposed to the power of the medium. After his army duties, he studied photography at Tzilum BaAm in Tel Aviv. After the encouragement of his teachers, Ben Shalom continued his education at Hadassah College, Jerusalem, where he finished with a degree in Communication and Photography studies. Since then, he has worked in several photography labs in Tel Aviv and New York City, and as a photographer at the Israel National Forensic Center. Ben Shalom currently works as an independent artist, focusing on pushing the boundaries of photography while also documenting his own life.
 
Lisa Roet (Australia)
 
Born in born 1967, Lisa Roet has 30 years’ experience working as a professional international artist. She is committed to environmental issues, genetic discoveries, and the evolving place of humanity, and addresses these themes in her art and design. Through an interdisciplinary approach to her practice, Roet has worked within the arts, design, and scientific communities to develop her art using a wide range of mediums and materials. This includes working with zoos, environmental groups, and museum archives worldwide.
 
 
Jos Diegel (Germany/The Netherlands)
 
Born in 1982, Jos Diegel studied at the University of Art and Design Offenbach Germany. Jos Diegel plays, entertains, and primarily concerns himself with social, political, and normative-narrative structures.  He understands his happiness as a disciplinary experimental science in negotiating and constructing situations by means of film, installation, painting, performance, literature and other genres. He has been involved in numerous international projects and has presented works at various places such as the European Media Art Festival Osnabrück, Binghamton University, Videonale Bonn, Film Festival for Human Rights Nuremberg, Arse Elektronika San Francisco, Athens Video Art Festival, Supermarket Stockholm, Pixxelpoint-Intern Media Art Festival Nova Gorica, Cabaret Voltaire Zurich, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt, Theater Gessnerallee Zürich, Gallery Art von Frei Berlin, Lodge Gallery New York, Gallery 5020 Salzburg, Kunstraum ProArte Hallein, Visual Voice Gallery Montreal, Deutsches Filmmuseum Frankfurt, Künstlerhaus Wien, Center For Contemporary Art Plovdiv, Xin Dan Wei Shanghai, Court Métrages Clermont Ferrand, and Museum of New Art Detroit.
 
 
Alessandro Rolandi (Italy, China)
 
Born in Pavia, Italy in 1971, Alessandro Rolandi studied chemistry, experimental theatre, film-making, and history of art. He has been living and working in Beijing since 2003 as a multimedia performance artist, director, curator, researcher, writer, and lecturer. His work focuses on social intervention and relational dynamics to expand the notion of art practice beyond existing structures, spaces, and hierarchies; and aims at further engaging directly with reality in multiple ways. In 2011, he founded and became director of the Social Sensibility Research & Development Department at Bernard Controls in Beijing and Paris, and is now one of the founding partners of the Social Sensibility Research Institute (SoSense).
 
Nikolaus A Nessler (Germany)
 
Born in 1958 in Frankfurt, Germany, Nikolaus A. Nessler’s works explore the aesthetic of light in space and darkness. In 1984, Nessler had his first installation at Expanded Cinema at Frankfurt Feste Alte Oper that included scratched slides and film loops. After this success, Nessler has continued to push boundaries and has exhibited his work at various exhibitions and spaces around the world, including Different Places at Oktogon II in 1990, which included 360 projected scratchings. In addition, his most important works have been featured all around the world: Arte Amazonasin Rio de Janeiro, Berlin, Dresden, and Aachen  1992/1994 ,Depot 2 in Graz, Austria 1993, The Victim is the Sacrificein Denmark 1995, the Beben /Terremoto in Wiesbaden 2012,  experimental installations for Luminale in Frankfurt from 2004 to 2016, and Driving the Ocean to Boats in Frankfurt 2018.