David Osthoff works with the potentials of post-digital representations of light. Discourses on urbanity, nature, and human community inform the theoretical framework of his photographic and video works. The media artist negotiates his sites of investigation with technically enhanced digital photography and production processes envisaged for the future. Operating at night – a symbolic break with conventional rhythms and a reduction to essential sensory impressions – is another connecting thread in Osthoff’s projects. For him, darkness is a powerful surface that serves both as a setting as well as a material. His meticulous artistic forays are time-intensive, speculative, and focused.
The works become visible in the public sphere as video installations and elaborate photographic prints. They sift out imperceptible or ignored signals of the visible and audible, plant aesthetic interventions in conserved landscapes, and augment the artist’s moving body with prostheses of illumination (Mirage). The omnipresence of human creativity in the Anthropocene is extrapolated and subjected to extended exposures with the use of program and movement pattern techniques (Hidden Noise, Above us). In this way, Osthoff’s works materialize temporality, unveil situations in the urban and rural present, and illuminate social structures with deconstructive gestures. Rhythms and idiosyncrasies are reflected in minimalist visual languages, lending them a structure, a center to circle around (Private Spheres, east). The vocabulary of his work does not promise readability, rather it accesses temporal spaces of recognition and confrontation: with one’s own vision and understanding, an encounter of manipulable light and the unknowable.
Osthoff gives his sites ample time to become scenes. He revisits his targets over and over again: sometimes over months and years, recalibrating, foraging, questioning himself. Random rhythms proliferate in his works: a coincidental soundtrack, life-size and made of light; a circle diagram composed by the absence and presence of illuminated spaces; a boat with a huge light-emitting diode crosses a black, asymmetrical lake, creating a liquid, nested exhibition space in four cameras – a space that initially only exists in the memory of the apparatus and then, much later, also before our eyes.
SELECTED EXHIBITION
2023
solo exhibition - outlight - minusoffspace Vienna
2021
Cumbre de las Artes y las Ciencias - Ecuador
2020
- September: Lightspecific - Curator: Katharina C. Herzog - Minuszwei - Vienna, Austria
https://www.les-nouveaux-riches.com/ausstellung-light-specific/
https://www.les-nouveaux-riches.com/ausstellung-light-specific/
- July: Angewandte Festival - Vienna, Austria - https://angewandtefestival.at/
-June: diploma exhibition - digitalekunst, Prof. Ruth Schnell, University of applied arts Vienna
2019
- July: Solo Show, Quito Ecuador
- April-May: Construction of the Possible - 13. Havannabienale - Havanna, Cuba
2018
- HÖHEN & TIEFEN
exhibiton with Michaela Putz - projectcell36 - Operngasse, Vienna
- Urban Living - Sprengel Museum, Hannover
- DYS(u)topia - theartfoundation.gr, Athen
2017
- Paulus braucht mehr Platz - Paulusplatz, Vienna
- Paralectric - Ludwig Fundation, Havana, Cuba (Solo Show)
- Snece Lab - ISA - Havana Cuba
- Bitoresc - Salaterena, Vienna, Austria
2016
- The Turtle - Heiligenkreuzer Hof, Vienna
- VIDEOSONICA - Cali, Colombia
- Lunzamsee - viertelfestival-noe.at
- Fantasy - Flat design and Digital Art, Chongqing, China
- VIS (Vienna Independent Shorts)
- Perlimpinpin - Vienna
- The Turtle - Organhouse, Chongqing, China
2015
Territory - Blütengasse 9, Vienna
- Lumo Festival - MOE, Vienna
- transducing the city - Heiligenkreuzer Hof, Vienna
- the Essence - University of applied arts vienna, Künstlerhaus, Wien
- Floating Village - Leo Schatzl, Kunstraum Linz
2014
The Essence - University of applied arts Vienna, Künstlerhaus, Wien
2013
VERTICAL Venice Biennale (biennale session)
RESIDENCIES
- 06-2019 - Cuyabeno, Ecuador (Ministerio del Ambiente Ecuador)
- 02-06.2017 - Havana, Cuba - ISA (Instituto Superior de Arte)
- 03.2016 - organhaus - Chongqing, China
- 07.2016 - Lunzamsee, Austria - viertelfestival-noe.at
EDUCATION
2020 Magister artium (Mag.art.) media art, digital arts
Prof. Ruth Schnell,
University of applied arts Vienna
2003 - 2007 Art School Fernando Estvez Santa Cruz
Tenerife, Spanien
2005 - 2007 Degree - Media designer for digital and photography
2004 - 2005 Degree
Graphic Design - Printing
2003 - 2004 Degree
Printmaking
MEDIA
2023 | les nouveaux riches