Photo: Kulturstiftung Gmünd

Altstadtgalerie Gmünd | Artist in Residence

Gmünd in Kärnten, Carinthia

ausstellung

The international guest studios in the Altstadtgalerie, operated by the non-profit private foundation Künstler:innenstadt Gmünd, are available to artists from all over the world for a several-week work stay and are open to the art-interested public. A total of six artists have been invited by the Künstler:innenstadt Gmünd non-profit private foundation this year for a several-week work stay in the Altstadtgalerie in Gmünd: JIEUN CHOI (KR), NADIA-VALESKA DEVONISH (DE), CLAUDIA HOLZINGER (DE), MELANIT THÖNI (AT), HIROYUKI MASUYAMA (JP), KATE ANDREWS (CA).Exhibitions 2026:Jieun Choi - PaintingThe exhibition by Jieun Choi can be seen from May 1 to June 30, 2026, daily from 10 AM to 1 PM and 3 PM to 6 PM.Jieun Choi (*1992 in Seoul, South Korea) lives and works in Karlsruhe. After completing a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts with a focus on painting at Dongguk University in Seoul, she continued her education at the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe, where she received her diploma with distinction and was a master student of Prof. Corinne Wasmuht. Her works have been presented in solo and group exhibitions in Germany and South Korea.About her workJieun Choi's painting revolves around the question of how the human body expresses itself in social and collective relationships: What is the human – as an individual and as part of a collective? From this question arise images, relationships, and tensions, with a special focus on the transitions and interstices of these relationships. In her works, she consciously deconstructs and reconstructs forms to create new visual levels. Abstraction and figuration, presence and absence, emergence and dissolution merge in her painting. Her works are characterized by physicality and sensibility.Motivation and project description for the AiR stay in Gmünd"In Gmünd, I want to dedicate myself to a project that deals with universal stories of humanity – inspired by mythology, literature, and psychology. The goal is a new series of paintings, consisting of small and medium-format canvases, accompanied by colored drawings and experimental studies. The focus is on metaphorical images and sensual narratives that question social conventions. Retreating to a place like Gmünd offers me the opportunity to pause, develop my artistic language further, and reorient myself – both as a person and as an artist." (Excerpt from Jieun Choi's motivation letter)Nadia-Valeska Devonish - PaintingThe exhibition by Nadia-Valeska Devonish can be seen from May 1 to June 30, 2026, daily from 10 AM to 1 PM and 3 PM to 6 PM.Nadia-Valeska Devonish (*1986 in Düsseldorf, Germany) grew up in New Zealand, worked in Melbourne and England, and had a study abroad period in Valencia, Spain. She studied Fine Arts at the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia and completed study abroad programs in Chile, Italy, and New Zealand. She was awarded the Heise Art Prize in Dessau and nominated for the STRABAG ArtAward.About her workNadia-Valeska Devonish understands identity as something fluid and changeable. Her work moves between places, languages, and cultural spaces, linking personal with collective memories. With oil painting, mixed media, and drawing, she explores the fragile balance between visibility and forgetting. In series such as "Family Album," she addresses female roles, care, and resistance, while "Between One Self and Another" focuses on the collective present and fleeting encounters. Her art is a living archive that opens up spaces for memory, transformation, and new possibilities.Motivation and project description for the AiR stay in GmündDuring the stay, I plan to develop a group of works that deals with pictorial strategies of remembering and forgetting. The focus is on transitions, empty spaces, and fragments, constellations in which presence and absence permeate each other. I want to investigate how what eludes or cannot be grasped can nevertheless become visually palpable. Not explanatory or documentary, but poetic, reduced, with painterly precision. I want to work more with blurriness, overlays, and fragmentation, not as a mere stylistic device, but as an artistic strategy to visually give more expression to remembering as a fluid, unstable, and often fragile movement. In Gmünd, I see the chance to pursue these questions in a new spatial and social environment. Working outside the familiar context, the change of perspective, the opening to the unknown, all contribute to questioning ingrained viewing habits and enabling new creative solutions. The residency structure with an open studio, regular public hours, and its close integration into the cityscape presents a special, direct form of public engagement. I see this as a valuable opportunity not only to intensify the work process in silence but also to bring it into resonance with a real counterpart.Claudia Holzinger - Photography, Performance and Visual StorytellingThe works of Claudia Holzinger can be seen from July 1 to August 31, 2026, in the Altstadtgalerie.Claudia Holzinger (*1985) lives and works in Vienna, where she has been working as a university assistant for Applied Photography and Time-based Media at the University of Applied Arts Vienna since 2022. International work stays have taken her to Detroit, Baden-Baden, and Prague, among other places; numerous prizes and grants. Holzinger studied Visual Communication and Photography at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg and the University of Applied Arts Vienna.About her work