Guttenberg Arts is please to announce our new summer pilot program: Our first COMMUNITY BASED ARTIST in Residence Elisabeth Smolarz.
Ms. Smolarz’ s work utilizes the multidisciplinary forms of photography, video, sculpture, performance and drawing to explore the social structures which constitute human interaction within a culture. In order to expose collective consciousness and patterns of behavior, she often ask strangers to become participants and collaborators in her projects. The immediacy of her working method, wherein participants are invited to act freely and with little or no direction before the camera, fosters an improvisational approach that reveals hidden aspects of these structures and allows individual voices to be heard. The resulting bodies of works often consist of series of case studies which focus on questions of the strategies of our self-definition that are often rooted in our economic, social and cultural surroundings. Ms. Smolarz’s work aims to expose the ways in which the human psyche is shaped by one’s cultural, political, and economical surroundings.
Bio: Immigrating from Poland to Germany, Elisabeth Smolarz grew up on the cusps of two different cultures affected by a communist and democratic system. Consequently, she became involved in the idea of how consciousness and perception is formed by one’s surroundings. Since then her work has been shown nationally and internationally - in venues such as The Bronx Museum, New York, Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, New York, Galeria Aleksander Bruno, Warsaw, Oberwelt e.V, Stuttgart, Kunsthalle Galapagos New York, Baden Württembergischer Kunstverein, Photography Triennial Esslingen, Carnegie Mellon, Independent Museum of Contemporary Art (IMCA) Cyprus, Brooklyn Arts Council, Reykjavik Photography Museum, Espai d'art contemporani de Castelló, the Sculpture Center and the 3rd Moscow Biennale among others. Awards and residencies include the LMCC Swing Space Residency,New York, AIM Artist Residency, Bronx Museum, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen Travel Grant, Karin Abt-Straubinger StiftungGrant, Sarai Artist Residency, New Delhi, India, Capacete Artist Residency, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Red Gate Gallery Artist Residency, Beijing, China among others.
Elisabeth Smolarz received her BA and her MFA from the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart.More of Elizabeth Smolarz’s work can be found at: www.smolarz.com
The Community Based Artist in Residence pilot program provides the artist with support and resources within the local Guttenberg community that the artist has proposed to work with, a small stipend, 24/7 access to studio space, group show, three visiting critiques, promote the work and exhibition through our social media platform and art world network. We ask the artist to give a free public talk and workshop within the community.