Biographies

Katrin Kamrau, born in Lübben (Spreewald) in 1981, lives and works in Lübben and Antwerp, in Belgium. Up to 2010, she studied »Photography and Media« at the Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences (under, among others, Prof. Andrea Sunder-Plassmann, Prof. Suse Wiegand and Prof. Anna Zika). She completed the postgraduate programme at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK) in Ghent, Belgium from 2012 to 2013. Kamrau has participated in numerous national and international group exhibitions, among others, at the M HKA Antwerp, at the ikob in Eupen (both 2014), at the W139 in Amsterdam, at the Künstlerhaus Bremen (both 2012) as well as in the Haus der Photographie, Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2011). She was awarded the prize in the competition, »gute aussichten – junge deutsche fotografie« (good prospects – work from young German photographers).

Jeronimo Voss, born in Hamm/Westphalia in 1981, lives and works in Frankfurt am Main. Up to 2009, he studied fine arts at the HfBK Städelschule, under, among others, Prof. Tobias Rehberger and in the autonomous class. Most recently, the MMK Frankfurt and the Galerie Cinzia Friedlaender (both 2013) have presented the artist in solo exhibition. Voss has participated in numerous national as well as international group exhibitions, among others at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, at the Secession in Vienna(both 2013), at documenta 13, in the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (both 2012), at the Kunsthaus Bregenz as well as at the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (both 2011).

METRO / -SKOPIEN

GWK Art Prize 2014

November 30, 2014 – January 25, 2015

OPENING WITH AWARD CEREMONY:
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2014, 11.30 AM

Katrin Kamrau and Jeronimo Voss are awarded with the GWK Art Prize 2014. The Bielefelder Kunstverein is for the first time presenting the GWK Art Prize in an exhibition. Alongside music and literature, the GWK – the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Westfälischen Kulturarbeit e.V. (Society for the Promotion of Westphalian Cultural Activity) supports promising young artists from Westphalia-Lippe with two awards annually in the category of fine arts.

What is common to both, Katrin Kamrau and Jeronimo Voss, is their engagement with both the social the historical role of images as well as the technical and socio-political conditions of its reproduction. Against the background of their mutual interest for each other’s work, both prizewinners have developed a joint presentation for the Bielefelder Kunstverein under the title, »metro / -skopien«, where they set up their current works and new productions in direct dialogue with each other.

Katrin Kamrau engages in the processes of image-making and perception in relation to the medium of photography. Alongside the fundamental questions she puts to the technical image, the artist is interested in both the current and historical use of optical images in our society. In particular, she looks into the social interactions, power structures, role models and networks of relations that form around printed images. Kamrau’s artistic praxis, in one sense a visual examination of photography, arises from the encounter between images derived from cameras and their transformation in the exhibition space.

Jeronimo Voss is interested in the narrative qualities of apparatuses for projecting. In many of his works, the artist reaches back to technically formal principles of phantasmagoria. He uses restored glass slides from the historical Laterna Magica (magic latern) as well as digitally processed images to create contemporary film installations and photo collages. By means of montage, Voss links historical views of the world, political theories and observations on the development of cities. This brings about works which are as much socially critical as they are poetic and integrate social and constructed space, imaginings of endlessness with images of the cosmos, as well as past, present and future.

The prizes were awarded this year by a jury of experts consisting of Sandra Dichtl (Dortmunder Kunstverein), Ben Kaufmann (Neuer Aachener Kunstverein) und Thomas Thiel (Bielefelder Kunstverein). For further information, see:  www.gwk-online.de