MARUYAMA Junko & Kaj Osteroth
VESSELS (器)
Vernissage: Friday, August 23, 2024, 6 - 10 pm
Duration: 24.08 – 01.09.2024
MARUYAMA Junko is interested in the human life and peoples environment: Nature and society. At HilbertRaum, she will transform the space through the accumulation of everyday trivial manual work, which she carries out as a life task. Junko raises question about ikebana, life, environmental issues, why people create, and the exchange between humans and nature.
Kaj Osteroth tracks down allies and ghosts, conjures up scenarios motivated by accidental isolation and cultivated despair, and continues her investigation on canvas from a location in Brandenburg. In this collaborative adventure with MARUYAMA Junko, she presents several large-scale paintings that play with the landscape as a cultural playground.
***
Junko Maruyama (she/her) graduated from Ritsumeikan University in 1999 with a degree in International Relations, majoring in Economics and Ecology. She then completed a BFA degree at Hunter College of the City University of New York in 2002, specialising in sculpture. Junko Maruyama collects and reconstructs everyday objects and waste materials under the keywords of ‘people’, ‘nature’ and ‘rebirth’ to create installations.
Her major awards and achievements include the second prize at Free Art Free (2004); The Charitable Trust Oki Memorial Artists Grant (2007); Judge’s Special Award in Taipei/Yokohama Artist Exchange Program (2009). In 2021, The Program of Overseas Study for Upcoming Artists, the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan (2021), Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2023).
Kaj Osteroth (she/her) completed her degree in Fine Arts at the Berlin University of the Arts in 2006, followed by a Master's degree in Anthropology and Art History at the Free University of Berlin in 2008.
Since then, she has participated in numerous (inter)national exhibitions, residencies and workshops with her own, but also collective and interdisciplinary formats (e.g. 2007-2021: feminist painter duo Hamann & Osteroth – together they were awarded the Villa Romana Prize 2020; currently: response*able drawing with Sarah Hegenbart), or organized them herself (e.g. Villa Romana, Florence / Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) / 10. Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art / Bag Factory Artist’s Studios, Johannesburg / IG Bildende Kunst, Vienna / Kunstverein Braunschweig / Künstlerhaus Bethanien, sign/CIAT, after the butcher and HilbertRaum in Berlin).
Image (detail)
Kaj Osteroth, Careful what you wish for (working title), oil on canvas, 150 x 180 cm, 2024