Bremen Studio Grant

Bremen Studio Grant 2024: Paule Potulski

The Bremen Studio Grant, which the Senator for Culture is awarding for the eighth time, will go in 2024 to the artist Paule Potulski, born in 1991 in Bremen. The artist graduated in 2022 with a degree in Fine Art from the University of the Arts in Bremen under Prof Natascha Sadr Haghighian and Prof Katrin von Maltzahn.

An external jury advising the Senator for Culture has recommended Paule Potulski as a grant holder for 2024. The jury is made up of members who are familiar with contemporary visual arts through their professional work. The rationale reads: "Paule Potulski often finds the material for her art in her immediate surroundings, be it dead wood in her own garden or clay from an exposed vein of clay on a building site on Werderinsel. [...] With this, she creates surprising and haunting sculptures and installations that appear both archaic and poetic, but at the same time demonstrate conceptual clarity."

Paule Potulski's works are the result of many converging processes, which are often also shaped by the work of other people, beings and entities - she sees the materials she works with as actors in their own right. They have their own temporality and their own knowledge, which Potulski endeavors to clarify respectfully. She is particularly interested in the subtle nuances that determine the rhythm and form structures.

The team at Künstlerhaus Bremen is looking forward to the artist "moving in" to the grant studio these days. Paule Potulski will enrich the community and the working process with her way of working and her manner, says the Senator for Culture. A final presentation at the Galerie im Künstlerhaus in December 2024 will provide an insight into the grant holder’s work. The artist is already looking forward to it: "Let's see where I'll turn up in December, when it's time to open the doors and share this journey with others."

Every year from January 1 to December 31, the Senator for Culture awards a twelve-month studio grant, including a monthly financial allowance for the realization of artistic work, to a visual artist living and working in Bremen. The aim of the scholarship is to support young artists in their entry into professional life and in networking in the art world, and to help establish their artistic work locally. The Künstlerhaus Bremen provides a studio workspace, enables the exchange with experienced colleagues and an insight into the practice of an internationally networked exhibition space. The fellows are supervised by the artistic director of the Künstlerhaus and other external curators. The fellowship ends with a small work presentation/artist talk at the Künstlerhaus Bremen.

Previous sholarship holders:

2022 Paula Hurtado Otero
2021 Myong-Hee Ki
2020 Irene Strese
2019 Daniel Neubacher
2018 Nora Olearius
2017 Tim Reinecke

Bremen Studio Grant 2023: Rebekka Kronsteiner

The Bremen Studio Grant, which the Senator for Culture is awarding for the seventh time, will go in 2023 to the artist Rebekka Kronsteiner, born in 1996 in Überlingen on Lake Constance. The artist is currently a master student of Prof. Stephan Baumkötter at the Hochschule für Künste in Bremen.
An external jury advising the Senator for Culture has recommended Rebekka Kronsteiner as a grant holder for 2023. The jury is made up of members who are familiar with contemporary visual arts through their professional work. The rationale reads: “Rebekka Kronsteiner works in a special way with an eye for the things around her. She combines objects and materials from her urban environment with mostly used industrial materials. The artist works primarily with materials such as latex, wax, foils, textiles or Plexiglas. These things become interesting for Kronsteiner precisely when they change their appearance over time, fade, age, yellow or become porous.”

Kronsteiner: "I plan for decay and change, which makes the passing of time visible. The works can be 'reset' to a kind of 'zero point' and thus rethought." Her artworks move between object and image, a clear assignment between category image or object/sculpture often remains elusive. Her works show hybrid forms in an impressive way, which allows them to be seen both as a picture on the wall or as an arrangement to form a three-dimensional form in space. In addition to her numerous participations in solo and group exhibitions, the jury continues to honor the Bremen artist's agile and active (networking) work as an added value for the Bremen art scene. She is co-operator of the feminist culture kiosk KOSK*I, which is currently stationed in the Wilhelm-Wagenfeld-Haus, and was co-founder of the MMS-Offspace Gallery in Bremen. The team at Künstlerhaus Bremen is looking forward to the artist "moving in" to the grant studio these days. Rebekka Kronsteiner will enrich the community and the working process with her way of working and her manner, says the Senator for Culture. 

Bremen Studio Grant 2022: Paula Hurtado Otero

The Bremen Studio Grant, which the Senator for Culture is awarding for the sixth time, will go to the artist Paula Hurtado Otero, born in Colombia in 1988, in 2022. The artist has lived and worked in Bremen since 2011. Here she studied fine arts at the Hochschule für Künste in Bremen with Prof. Ingo Vetter and with Prof. Natascha Sadr Haghighian, with whom she completed her master's degree in 2019.

An artistic advisory board, which advises the Senator for Culture, has recommended Paula Hurtado Otero as a scholarship recipient for 2022. The advisory board is made up of members who are familiar with contemporary visual arts through their professional work.

The rationale reads:
"Paula Hurtado Otero has convinced the jury with her diverse, often ephemeral work, which in many cases includes collaborations with other artist:s and other actors. The new studio fellow relates to social structures and developments from her own particular perspective. To do so, she appropriates cultural techniques, artistic media, historical events, and foreign perspectives, which she traces and renders in new and original narratives."

She describes her own artistic work and focus as a "work on the narrative" that develops from a personally conditioned questioning, but always thinks along its socially relevant level. Accordingly, many of her projects are processual, which she also wants to make the basis of her artistic work in the studio fellowship. This emphasized use of the one-year working situation in the Künstlerhaus Bremen as a continuous artistic work, which does not only manifest itself in a final presentation, is for the jury a particularly appealing way of dealing with the possibilities and conditions of the studio fellowship, from which in turn numerous impulses can be expected for all those who are engaged in their work on a new narrative during Paula Hurtado Otero's fellowship year.

Bremen Studio Grant 2021: Myong-Hee Ki

The Bremen Studio Stipend, which the Senator for Culture is awarding for the fifth time, will go to the artist Myong-Hee Ki in 2021.

Born in 1981, the artist studied at the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts in Sweden as well as at the Hochschule für Künste in Bremen and completed her studies as a master student of Professor Katrin von Maltzahn.
An artistic advisory board, which advises the Senator for Culture, has recommended Myong-Hee Ki as a scholarship recipient for 2021. The advisory board consists of members who are familiar with contemporary visual arts through their professional activities.

The rationale reads:
"Myong-Hee Ki's quiet and at the same time clear and strong drawing position has convinced the jury. Her drawings bear witness to her own handwriting, which is determined by simple forms or fine patterns, often based on textile fabrics.One focus is on the genesis of structures: a pattern emerges from individual forms, a texture grows from countless honeycombs. In her drawings, Myong-He Ki is not concerned with exact lines, parallelism, or perfect form. Through small irregularities, compression or stretching of lines, she gives the forms and fabrics something lively and also brings a spatial aspect into the picture. The jury is convinced that the scholarship will enable Myong-Hee Ki to further develop her artistic position in a concentrated way and furthermore sees, not least through the connection to the Künstlerhaus Bremen and the professional connection that comes with it, a great opportunity for the artist to network more strongly locally but also nationally and to facilitate her transition into the profession as a freelance artist."

Bremen Studio Grant 2020: Irene Strese

The Bremen Studio Scholarship, awarded by the Senator for Culture for the fourth time, goes in 2020 to the artist Irene Strese, b.1986. She studied at the University of the Arts in Bremen and completed her studies in 2019 as a master student of Prof. Andre Korpys and Prof. Markus Löffler.

Bremen Studio Grant 2019: Daniel Neubacher

Daniel Neubacher, born in Nürnberg in 1985, studied at the Bremen University of the Arts with Prof. Jean-Francois Guiton, concluding with a master's degree in 2016.

At the intersection of digital and physical space, Neubacher dedicates his artistic work, that is, contemporary conditions of art creation in terms of representation and reception.

This artist's work has been represented in group exhibitions in Berlin, Cologne, Schaffhausen, Helsinki, Bucharest, Detroit, Toronto, and web-based exhibitions, among others.

In 2016, Neubacher completed a research residency in Los Angeles, USA, where he visited 3D scanning studios and explored contemporary representational techniques. Since 2016, Daniel Neubacher has been an alumni of the German National Academic Foundation.

Bremen Studio Grant 2018: Nora Olearius

The Bremen-based artist Nora Olearius has been the new scholarship holder in the Bremen Atelierstipendium since the beginning of the year. She has been working in her studio at the Künstlerhaus Bremen since January 2018.

Olearius studied at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen with a final master student year. In 2017 she won the 40th Bremen Förderpreis für Bildende Kunst.

Bremen Studio Grant 2017: Tim Reinecke

Artist Tim Reinecke is the recipient of the Bremen Atelier Scholarship for the year 2017.

Tim Reinecke studied at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen and was a master student in 2014. Since then, his work has been exhibited internationally, including in the group exhibitions (un)mediated nature at Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin, PUNK. Its Traces in Contemporary Art, at MACBA, Barcelona, LOT - lack of transmission, at North End Studios, Detroit, USA or as part of Raumstationen, 87th Fall Exhibition, at Kunstverein Hannover.