Two Artists, Two Portraits

The Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) welcomes two new residents for the second round of the ISTA Artist in Residence program. The German conceptual artist Maximilian Prüfer and the Mexican former mathematician turned multidisciplinary artist Julia Carrillo will join the campus community from April to June 2024. They will exchange ideas and start exciting collaborations with ISTA researchers. Get to know these creative minds via these two portraits, in their own words.

Maximilian Prüfer (Germany, 1986)

My name is Maximilian Prüfer and I am a conceptual artist. I grew up in the Allgäu, Bavaria, and in Portugal. I completed my studies in design and communication strategy at the Augsburg University of Applied Sciences and spent a semester abroad studying fine arts at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna in Italy.

As an artist, I draw my inspiration mainly from those areas of nature that lie beyond our intuitive spatial or temporal understanding. I am interested in the various things that living creatures can teach us and our society through the way they move and behave. This perception of our surroundings allows us to better understand and resonate with the peculiarities and structures of nature.

Over the last twelve years, I have developed various methods to make such traces and processes in nature visible. One example of this is the technique that I called “Naturantypie”. It consists of a fine coating on paper that can be used to render subtle traces in nature visible. This process has enabled me to depict raindrops, traces of ants and mites, as well as the flapping wings of moths, among other things. I am convinced that a better understanding of nature can teach us to treat it with more consideration. In this way, art contributes to increasing our knowledge about nature by articulating aesthetics and emotions.

A long series of absurd coincidences and adventurous biographical circumstances led me to finally find my artistic niche. Being an artist is a great privilege for me. I am very grateful to society and therefore do my best to give something back to it.

As an ISTA Artist in Residence, I am eager to question my personal beliefs. I’m open to the fact that certain views I used to be convinced were right may turn out to be wrong. In doing so, I will actively seek new areas of application where the interface of art and science can make a social or ecological contribution.

I am delighted to be part of the 2024 ISTA Artist in Residence program!

Julia Carrillo (Mexico, 1987)

My name is Julia Carrillo, and I am a multidisciplinary artist with a scientific background. I grew up in Mexico City, in a family of scientists, and have been attracted to creative activities and arts from a young age. I did my bachelor’s in mathematics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and then earned a master’s degree in visual arts at the Academia de San Carlos, also in Mexico. Thereupon, I spent a year at the New York School of Visual Arts on a scholarship for artistic improvement.

Today, my work centers on an artistic reflection and exploration of apparently simple physical phenomena and principles, like waves or the minimum energy principle, and how they interact with the physical space through artifactual contexts. I am particularly interested in how these events are made manifest through the articulation of devices that bring them closer to our capacities. In my work, I represent phenomena in artistic terms, constructing new artifactual arrays to extend our ability to perceive and interact with them. By doing this, I aim to share experiences that can get us closer to phenomena and seek to give new meanings to how we perceive them. I communicate this body of work through languages like photography, sculpture, installation, architecture, and performance.

Previously, my work mostly focused on features of phenomena that are assumed to exist independently of human existence. Part of my earlier activities found crucial input in periods of the history of science, particularly in the history of astronomy and geometry. Currently, some of my new interests involve examining contemporary phenomena that are co-created between humans and nature. I am interested in more sustainable ways of approaching human goals and curiosities. These include concerns like space conquest and its effects on climate change and, more generally, the current ecological crisis. Looking forward, my interests are leading me to also investigate cutting-edge science, which makes my stay as a 2024 Artist in Residence at ISTA timely. During my residency, I would like to explore ways to artistically express various technological and theoretical advancements that shed light on how we understand our place in the world.