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).
Michael Kress is artist & curator of numerous exhibitions and symposiums:
2019 WAVING WAVES COMMUNITY – Pier-2 Art Center, KAOHSIUNG, TAIWAN
2018 “DIS YOURSELF”, Core ART Space, UGA, Athens, GA, USA
2017 GREEN BANK ART FESTIVAL SHANGHAI, Museum of Modern Art Shanghai
2017 YOU ARE, Projektraum Deutscher Künstlerbund, Berlin
2015 GWANGJU DESIGN BIENALE, Gwangju Design Center (Speech)
2015 A STORY BEHIND A STORY BEHIND A STORY
Ella Spector (Tel Aviv) and Belit Sağ (Istanbul) with students of Gymnasiums Blankenese
2014 DE_SCRIPT_ION – Artist Conversations on Hanne Darboven
with Liang Yue (Shanghai) , Katja Lell (Zürich), Yin Yi (Shanghai) and Carsten Berger (Hamburg) FRISE Hamburg
2013 Querung des Gleichers/ artists journeys in the 21th century / FRISE Hamburg
2009 The Artsit Feeling – artistic networks“ in cooperation IGBK / IAA UNESCO
and Künstlerhaus Hamburg
2001 Artist’s Voice – The own / the alien, Symposium, Berlin Academy of Arts
1999 Artainment“ symposium, Sprengel Museum Hannover.
Exhibitions since 1991 several:
2014 ADORE / FANS ARE ARTISTS – ARTISTS ARE FANS
Yokohama Triennale 2014, Zounohana Terrace, Yokohama, Japan
2012 “The Fields Are Soft And Green (The Innocence of the Artist)”, Nishinomiya-Funasaka Biennale 2012, Japan
2010 „Art and conversation“ ZKM /center for art and media, Karlsruhe
2009 „Yo Aqaba – With Lawrence and Lennon and The Four Musketeers through the desert to the movies,“ Foundation Landdrostei, Pinneberg.
2009 „Artists Eat World Banks“, Kunstverein Loitz.
2004 „Sommerfrische“, Kunsthalle Hamburg.