YEAR III
2024/2025
MAXINE WEISS
Maxine Weiss (*1992) graduated in 2024 with honors as Meisterschülerin at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich with Professor Alexandra Bircken and Professor Raphaela Vogel and was awarded the Debutant*innenförderung prize.
In her artistic practice, which encompasses sculptures, installations, research, and videos, Maxine Weiss pursues a material-based approach wherein all components maintain a mutual and non-hierarchical relationship.
Aeroplastics, Installation, Diploma 2024
JU YOUNG KIM
Ju Young Kim (*1991, Seoul, KR) graduated in 2024 with honors as Meisterschülerin at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich with Professor Olaf Nicolai.
She explores transitional states and transit zones in her sculptures and installations by combining traditional craft techniques such as stained glass, metal casting, and ceramics with high-tech objects. The works are characterized by surreal elements that have been removed from their original context, offering a new perspective on the phenomena of a globalized world. Landscape motifs and traditional symbolism intersect with industrial products and transportation systems, to depict an accelerated society where various cultural and temporal components converge. In her glass wall works, Kim examines the relativity of space and time from the perspective of a transcontinental traveler.
MICHAEL MÖNNICH
Michael Mönnich, (*1992, Germany) graduated in 2024 at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich with Prof. Nicole Wermers.
Michael Mönnich’s works include sculpture, photography and moving images. They deal with questions of aesthetic perception, the conditions of art production and the concept of work in late modernity. His works are characterised by a laconic style of expression and show precise observations with subtle shifts in modes of perception.
Mönnich explores the interface between aesthetic experience and social analysis, questioning the mechanisms and effects of a digitalised meritocracy.
Retina Strength; Bright Nights; light water glas bassin sculptures, 60x200x180cm each
Swimmers UV printed and laser engraved granit plates 4*(60x 100x 2cm)
TATJANA VALL
Tatjana Vall, (*1994, Sombor, Serbia) graduated in 2024 at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich with honors (Meisterschülerin) with Pamela Rosenkranz and was awarded the price of the Stiftung Kunstakademie for her diploma work.
Tatjana Vall disrupts conventional perceptions of authenticity, seeking to expose the subtle irregularities inherent in physical reality. Drawing from psychology, art history, and computer and vision sciences, her work operates at the intersection of these disciplines. Her artificial ecosystem installations combine light, sculptures, and mixed-media compositions realized through materials such as silk, metal, paper, and stone.
Ceramic, stainless steel, Alu, motor, polyester, 2 channel video (27 Inch) with sound, 65 x 65 x 218 cm
YOUNSIK KIM
Younsik Kim (*1992, Seoul) graduated in 2024 with honors as Meisterschüler at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich with Professor Alexandra Bircken and Professor Raphaela Vogel and he was awarded the Prize of the Erwin und Gisela von Steiner Foundation.
He is an artist who works with multimedia mediums based on sculpture and installation.
In an era dominated by multimedia contemporary mediums, he works on the theme of the finitude of sculpture's body and existence, and the alternative preservation and restoration of such limitations(the material finitude of the
sculpture, he calls it the physical death of the sculpture).
Recently, he has been working with video and sound and sculptural media with
traditional materials such as ceramics and metal.
YEAR II
2023/2024
Installation view
Ohne Titel (Sitzbank Nylon embroidery, cowhide, foam, construction steel, acrylic paint, 2023
Ohne Titel (Sitzbank Nylon embroidery, cowhide, foam, construction steel, acrylic paint, 2023
Installation view
CHRISTIAN EISENBERG
Christian Eisenberg (*1994) studied in the sculpture class of Professor Alexandra Bircken at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and graduated with honours in 2023
He is an artist working with several materials and institutional structures. Selected exhibitions include di volta in volta, Paris (2024); Austin Space, Munich (2024); Rinde am Rhein, Düsseldorf (2024); Milchstraße 4, Munich (2023).
JIEUN PARK
Jieun Park (*1989, Cheungju, Korea) is a young artist from South Korea. After attending Chungbuk National University in Cheongju, she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich under Jorinde Voigt and received her diploma from Johanna Reich in 2021.
In addition to painting and drawing, Jieun Park also finds her expressiveness in performances, which she records and projects on walls as video works.
Stäbe
strange cousin, molten glass
REBECCA RUCHTI
Rebecca Ruchti (*1993) graduated in 2023 at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich with Professor Nicole Wermers after receiving her state exam in 2022 with Tanja Widmann. For her exam in 2022 she received the exam price.
Rebecca Ruchtis work deals with how we think in forms. How form, material and surface lead to categorisation, attribution and certain handling. What happens when the internalised mechanisms of perception do not work and when material becomes autonomous.
Her work encompases the use of ceramics, glass, stone, paper, written and spoken language.
LEA VAJDA
Lea Vajda (*1992) graduated in 2023 with honors as Meisterschülerin at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich with Professor Florian Pumhösl.
In her practice, Vajda uses various printing techniques to edit, reproduce or transform existing material. She examines social and historical processes such as fantasies of control, the constitution of the contemporary self, and notions of progress.
Untitled, installation made of hot air balloon fabric (nylon), wooden construction, cotton, ceramics
Untitled, installation view
LUCY REYNOLDS
Lucy Lou Reynolds (*1995, Munich) graduated in 2022 at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich with Professor Tanja Widmann.
Her artistic explorations are usually based on the idea of what could (still) happen in a space. Her starting point are the classic four walls, whereby the ‘fourth wall’ is often loose and the position in the room can mentally wonder to theatre, cinema or circus. The artist is interested in the expectations spectators have when they stand outside constructions - regardless of its size - and wonder what is happening inside. The objects and installations usually have something to do with play(s).
Foto: Thomas Splett
Foto: Thomas Splett
NICOLAI GÜMBEL
Nikolai Gümbel (*1995, Frankfurt am Main) graduated in 2023 with honors as Meisterschüler at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich with Professor Alexandra Bircken.
His artistic practice is characterised by context-specific, cross-media works. In addition to drawing, sculpture and installation, he frequently works with film and video.
YEAR I
2022/2023
wood, metal, fabric, leather, plaster, acrylic paint, video (fullHD, 10.26min, stereo) Installation views by Thomas Splett, video stills by Sophia Mainka
wood, metal, fabric, leather, plaster, acrylic paint, video (fullHD, 10.26min, stereo) Installation views by Thomas Splett, video stills by Sophia Mainka
SOPHIA MAINKA
Sophia Mainka (*1990,Munich graduated in 2020 with honors as Meisterschülerin at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich with Professor Alexandra Bircken.
Sophia Mainka works with various media such as drawing, sculpture, and video, which she usually combines in expansive installations. Her work engages with philosophical discourses and current social trends, as well as artistic research and production in an analysis of a middle-class aesthetic. Doing so, the artist raises questions that the structure and reality of life in a supposedly posthuman age inevitably raise. Relationships between human beings and objects are called into play, as is the movement of the body. She abstracts, enlarges, reduces,manipulates everyday objects, playing with interpretations and reinterpretations.
Sound installation: 14 min. 52 sec., with texts and voices by Anna McCarthy, Edith Matilda Thomas, Justin Lieberman, Jo Penca, Johanna Gonschorek, Lita Grey Chaplin and Paulina Nolte
Aluminium mesh, cellulose, digital prints, copper wire, cable, piezo discs, 30 x 40 cm
JOHANNA GONSCHOREK
Johanna Gonschorek (*1989) graduated in 2021 at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich with Prof. Nicole Wermers after receiving her state exam in 2020 with Prof. Stephan Dillemuth.
In her work, she combines different levels of perception making contexts tangible in a variety of ways at the same time. On the one hand, she is interested in everyday realities such as architecture, public places and social spaces, but also in historical and political contexts and working with archives.
Her research-based approach, which combines sculptural and multimedia means, leaves a lot of freedom in terms of form and content, often based on feminist issues.
AKI KIEFER
Aki Kiefer (*1989) lives and works in Munich. She graduated in 2021 from the Academy of Fine Arts Munich in the class of Pamela Rosenkranz. She studied Fine Arts in the class of Alba D'Urbano at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig (HGB) and Design at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy.
Her artistic practice encompasses, painting, photography, installation and working in the collective.
Liquid chalk on floor, variable size, plasterboard, 10 x 15 cm, engraving on plaster, glass plates, acrylic spray on glass
Liquid chalk on floor, variable size, plasterboard, 10 x 15 cm, engraving on plaster, glass plates, acrylic spray on glass
NATALIYA BORUSHCHAK
Nataliya Borushchak (*1987, Lwiw, Ukraine)after studying art and multimedia at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich she studied painting and graphics at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich under Prof. Axel Kasseböhmer and Prof. Schirin Kretschmann. She graduated in 2021.
In her work Nataliya investigates the structural properties of various materials, which are select and translated into graphic structures. Often fragile and microscopically small textures whose structures can hardly be seen with the bare eye. Through processes of isolation, scaling and graphic translation, these are transformed and given a new visibility.
She works in a very minimalist way, often using only a pen or fineliner to create large drawings.