MICHAEL KRESS

Michael Kress, is a conceptual artist, born in 1964, in Munich, Germany, living in Hamburg. The focus of his work is semiotics and language as a normative moment in the construction of a media-identity.

Since 2004 Kress has been examining spatial imagination in varies movies of the 1960’s. Coming from a background of conceptual art, he uses different media, like video, drawing, writing, sound and photography in his examinations.

His most recent project is about a region in southern Spain, that was the site of Europe’s worst nuclear accident. In this project Kress tries to show both the beauty of Andalusia and the danger hidden in the soil, which is a relic of the cold war. In 2012 Michael Kress has been invited to the Funasaka Biennale where he produced a conversation video performance with the curator Tatsuya Fuji based on a song by Tom Waits. 2014 Michael Kress showed his latest artist conversation project “Adore – Artists are Fans/Fans are Artists” in Yokohama/Japan at ZOU-NO-HANA Terrace.

In 2015 Michael initiated the network project  Hyper Cultural Passengers. This cooperation of artists, philosophers and other cultural activists questions the myth of the autonomous, and thereby self-sufficient, subject and proposes instead the figure of the hypercultural passenger.

Michael Kress studied Visual Communication and Fine Arts at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg with: Prof. Kurd Alsleben, Prof. Stanley Brouwn, Prof. Gauillaume Bijl and Prof. B.J. Blume. Diploma and master student of Prof. B.J. Blume.

Since several years Kress is engaged in cultural politics. He had been member of the executive committee of FRISE/Hamburg, one of the most long existing artist-studio-houses in Germany. Since 2012 he is part of the executive committee the Deutscher Künstlerbund (German Association of Artists). From 1996-2003 Michael Kress had been member of the board of the International Association of Fine Arts(iaa/UNESCO).