Simon Hemmer
Simon Hemmer (1978, Cologne) graduated from the art academy in Dusseldorf, where he was taught by Albert Oehlen (2002). He completed his training at De Ateliers in Amsterdam (2007). Hemmer has regularly exhibited both sculpture and – primarily – painting since 2002. He won the prestigious Dutch Royal Subsidy for Painting in 2007.
Hemmer’s work concentrates on the process of painting. Rather than offering us autobiographical expression, he engages in a dance of shapes and styles that reveal and celebrate the creative function of painting. At a dazzling pace and with an enviable virtuosity, he paints spaces, objects, grids and shapes that are never what they appear to be. In exposing the process of imagination and creation, Hemmer flirts with the traditional conventions of painting, turning them upside down and inside out.
Lutz Driessen
Lutz Driessen (1977, Cologne) is associated with Galerie Hammelehle und Ahrens and Matthias Jahn Galerie in Germany. He makes paintings, drawings and sculptures using figurative techniques, but his works in those fields show differences in intensity with each approach, exhibiting a thin line between figurative and abstract ideas in the process. His drawings are large and show development of spatial representations – typically still lifes. By comparison, his paintings are smaller in scale and more sober and flat. They lack the intense detail of his drawings, appearing more abstract. The sculptures sit in-between his expressive drawings and sober paintings. Recently Driessen has made use of ceramics, adding readymade pieces, not so much to create a collage, but to alter the composition. These additions of everyday objects, such as a ruler or a cigarette, sit his work between pop culture and art history.
Seb Koberstädt
Seb Koberstädt (1977, Heidenheim) is affiliated with gallery Luis Campaňa. He works with typical building materials such as concrete, plasterboard, wood and foam, often combined with found materials in his possession that he spontaneously transforms into sculptural objects. Koberstädt doesn’t work from the basis of designs or sketches, but from the visual work process itself. His often-provocative images refer to aspects of subcultures and aspects of urban architecture, but are also personal stories.