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 EXHIBITIONS
Solo exhibitions:
2023 · Outlight · Minuszwei - Vienna, Austria
2019 · Líneas de luz · Casa Hernán Cueva - Quito, Ecuador
2019 · Blütengasse 9 · Vienna, Austria
2017 · Paralectric · Fundación Ludwig, Havana, Cuba
Group exhibitions:
2025
· Werner Herzog - Under the Volcano · Casa de la Cultura, Los Llanos de Aridane - La Palma, Spain
2024
· ARCHITEKTUR//GE/SCHICHTEN/ · Lichtfest Krems an der Donau, Krems - Austria
· A Collective Journey to Climate Justice · SOHO STUDIOS - Vienna, Austria
· Renaturation / Denaturation Workshop · Vienna - Siona, Amazon - Ecuador · SOHO STUDIOS - Vienna, Austria
2023
· solo exhibition - outlight - minusoffspace Vienna
2021
· Cumbre de las Artes y las Ciencias - Ecuador
2020
· 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/
· Angewandte Festival - Vienna, Austria - https://angewandtefestival.at/
2019
· Solo Show, Quito Ecuador
· Construction of the Possible - 13. Havannabienale - Havanna, Cuba
2018
· HÖHEN & TIEFEN - projectcell36 - Operngasse, Vienna
· Urban Living - Sprengel Museum, Hannover
· DYS(u)topia - theartfoundation.gr, Athen
2017
· 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)
· The Turtle - Organhouse, Chongqing, China
2013
· VERTICAL Venice Biennale (biennale session)
RESIDENCIES
2024 · Werner Herzog - Under the Volcano - La Palma, Spain
2019 · Cuyabeno, Ecuador (Ministerio del Ambiente Ecuador)
2017 · ISA (Instituto Superior de Arte) - Havana, Cuba
2016 · Organhaus - Chongqing, China
2016 · viertelfestival - Lunzamsee, Austria
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