Image Credit: Dominic Schwab, Uwe Brunner, Karl Holmqvist, Michèle Pagel, and Kris Lemsalu.
The MAK Center for Art and Architecture is pleased to announce Final Projects: Group LV, exhibiting bodies of work produced by our Artists and Architects-in-Residence, Uwe Brunner, Dominic Schwab, Karl Holmqvist, Michèle Pagel, and Kris Lemsalu. Final Projects: Group LV marks the culmination of the 55th iteration of the Artists and Architects-in-Residence Program at the Mackey Apartments.
Uwe Brunner and Dominic Schwab
For their Final Project, Uwe Brunner and Dominic Schwab, in collaboration with Bettina Katja Lange, reinterpret the Mackey Apartments as the pseudo-headquarters of the real estate media group Vapors to explore the correlations between the real estate market and the social media landscape in Los Angeles. Inspired by the city's commercial aesthetics and the prevalence of prop-tech platforms, they rebranded the property through both physical and digital interventions. The most prominent feature is a Vapors hot air balloon hovering above the property's courtyard, drawing attention as a landmark and a visual satire of LA’s eternal allure of sunset sales.
Additionally, the apartment building features a projection of their life writing process, undertaken during their residency. This interactive and spatial journal, composed of everyday fragments, offers a window into their lives and research at the Mackey Apartments, emphasizing the building's role as yet another Content House within the urban landscape of Los Angeles.
Uwe Brunner
Uwe Brunner is an architect, teacher, and researcher based in Vienna. He studied architecture at the Technical University of Vienna, at the School of the Arts Amsterdam, and received his master’s degree in arts and architecture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. From 2019 to 2024, he was a faculty member at ./studio3, Institute for Experimental Architecture at the University of Innsbruck. He is a co-founder of SOAP, an online architecture practice, and a co-founder of the Vienna Architecture Summer School. He is currently pursuing a PhD, focusing on the essay, its affective and cognitive modalities, and its potential for space-making within digital environments. His work has been widely screened and exhibited, including at the New Media Art Museum La Gaîté Lyrique in Paris, Centre d'Art Santa Mònica in Barcelona, CPH:DOX - Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, ETH Zurich, the Goethe-Institut in Beijing, and The Segal Center in New York, among many more.
DOMINIC SCHWAB
Dominic Schwab is an architect, teacher and researcher based in Vienna. He studied architecture at Vienna University of Technology, and holds a master degree in arts and architecture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Since 2020, he has been a faculty member at the ./studio3, Institute for Experimental Architecture at the University of Innsbruck. He is currently pursuing a PhD with a research focus on the spectrality of media-technologies and how they inform, constitute & alter the archival paradigm in the age of digital media abundance. His work has been widely screened and exhibited, including Ars Electronica Barcelona Garden 2021, AUT Innsbruck 2021, Greenwich Heritage Gallery London 2016, Wien Museum 2016, Rundgang Academy of Fine Arts Vienna 2016/17/18 amongst others.He is co-founder of SOAP, some online architecture practice, co-founder of the Vienna Architecture Summer School and co-founder and board member of PARABOL, an association that aims at advancing artistic research.
Karl Holmqvist
Karl Holmqvist will present a new film, Meshes of the Mackey Apts, a remake and a tribute to the classic Maya Deren 1943 silent b/w film Meshes of the Afternoon shown together with preparatory drawings and props from the shoot. Additionally during his stay, Holmqvist has been writing poetry as a kind of journal or Los Angeles city portrait that he will present as a mini booklet OCEAN’S 24/7ELEVEN and spoken word performance during opening night.
Karl Holmqvist lives and works in Berlin. His work often includes writing in artist’s books, installations, video and performance. Recent one-person exhibitions include Laxart, Los Angeles, Fridericianum, Kassel, Centre d’Art Contemporaine, Geneva, Indipendenza, Rome (with Klara Liden). He has participated in the Venice Biennial in 2003 and 2011 and Performa, New York in 2005, 2007, 2013 and 2023. Karl Holmqvist’s works can be found in the collections of Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Le Musée d’Art Moderna de la Ville de Paris, Paris, Fridericianum, Kassel and Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf among many other public and private collections.
Michèle Pagel and Kris Lemsalu
During her residency, Pagel investigated current and local political issues like social justice, classism, nationalism, white suprematism, and cultural differentiations. Working with locally sourced objects, she focuses on the universality of human body images to highlight the contradictions of national pride. She uses painting and collage technique to reflect the ills of white supremacy on the nation.
Lemsalu presents two sculptures, Woundlicker and Amber Takes A Long Time. Woundlicker is constructed of ceramics, wood and special woven textiles. The woven structures are done in collaboration with local artists. Amber Takes A Long Time utilizes vintage traffic light from Hollywood film sets along with ceramics, wood, and mixed media. In both works Lemsalu incorporates the landscape of the inner psyche and the local communities.
Collaboratively, Pagel and Lemsalu produced a cyanotype textile wall piece that looks to form solidarity amongst artists and all creative powers.
For the exhibition opening, Pagel invites the music composer Mariela Gutierrez with her project SITES to perform live as part of her underground Cassette-Label “RatRights”.
MICHÈLE PAGEL
Michèle Pagel has been working as a freelance sculptress in Vienna since 2012. In 2015, they started teaching sculpture as an University Assistant at the ceramics department at the Art University in Linz, Austria. Pagel continued this teaching job until 2019, and also ventured a three month field trip to Uganda, Afrika in 2018. In 2021, they established a self-employed company in order to professionalize their artistic career and to concentrate exclusively on their own projects and exhibitions. The same year, Pagel started collaborating with the Viennese Gallery, MeyerKainer which is representing their work in solo exhibitions and art fairs. Pagel has participated in various international group shows and showcased their artworks in several European Museums and Institutions.
KRIS LEMSALU
Kris Lemsalu was born in 1985 in Tallinn, Estonia, and lives and works between Vienna and Tallin. She creates mixed-media sculptures, installations and performances with unexpected materials. Lemsalu’s pieces evoke the bestial side of human beings and civilizations, and are often underscored by feminist themes. Lemsalu has shown as part of Performa 17 (2017), DRAF performance night (2017), Bunshitu Gallery, Tokyo (2015), Ferdinand Bauman Gallery, Prague (2015) and is represented by Koppe Astner, Glasgow and Temnikova & Kasela, Tallinn. Lemsalu will represent Estonia at the Venice Biennale 2019.
Artists
The Artists & Architects-in-Residence Program at the Mackey Apartments is funded by the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport, in cooperation with the MAK — Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, with additional support from the Austrian Consulate General Los Angeles.
