Hue and HCMC – Project “Open Academy Europe”

HUE: Workshops: 14 – 18 Nov
Presentations: Fri 18 Nov, 3 pm
Performance: Sat 19 Nov, 6pm
Hue University of Fine Arts

HCMC: Workshops: 21 – 25 Nov
Presentations: Fri 25 Nov, 3 pm
Performance: Sat 26 Nov, 6pm
HCMC University of Fine Arts

From Goethe Institut:
The successful project “Open Academy” in 2010 which invited several artists from Berlin to the Academies of Fine Arts in Hanoi, Hue and HCMC now continues as a EUNIC Project “Open Academy Europe”. The Goethe Institut, the British Council and the Austrian Embassy invite artists from their countries to Hue and HCMC. Again the Academies of Fine Arts will be their partners. Together the themes have been selected: Paul Schwer (Germany) works with installations, Barnaby Steel (GB) with photography and graphic design and Thomas Feuerstein (Austria) with video art.

Together with teachers and master class students of the Academies, the three artists will hold workshops, lectures and performances at both Academies of Fine Arts. The intention is to strengthen dialog between the European and the Vietnamese art scenes and to enrich the education, especially of younger artists, through innovative impulses. The results of the collaboration will be presented in an exhibition at the end of the workshops in each Academy of Fine Arts.

Paul Schwer creates installations which open to the viewer unusual perspectives on the interaction of light and color. Living and working in Düsseldorf, Paul Schwer, born in 1951, started his artistic career at the Academy of Fine Arts Düsseldorf. His art, which has received national and international awards, deals with the “spatialization of painting” by using various materials, frequently transparent acrylic or glass, but also found objects made of wood or metal, which are stained, painted and arranged in space. Paul Schwer will complete each week of workshops in Hue and HCMC with the performance “blast” using colored glass shards.

Barnaby Steel, born in 1978, will be working with the two main topics of photography and graphic design during “Open Academy Europe”. An innovative media artist working in London, Steel joined the media art collective D-Fuse in 2004. With D-Fuse, Barney Steel, winner of numerous awards, became internationally known for his exceptional photography and graphic exhibitions. His project “Undercurrent”, for example, investigates urban space and its relations to social changes. More about Barney Steel , visit here.

Thomas Feuerstein, born in 1968, teaches media art at the Academies of Fine Arts in Bern (Switzerland) and Innsbruck (Austria). As an artist and author in the fields of media art and fine art, Feuerstein includes almost all disciplines in his work, with the focus on what he calls “conceptual narration” in collaboration with visual and linguistic elements. More about Feuerstein, visit here.