Fabian Hesse
Fabian Hesse is an interdisciplinary artist working with digital fabrication. In his practice Hesse focuses on the tech-knowledge of digital production and material transformations in the course of the technological transition. He uses 3D printing, modeling processes and algorithms from which he creates abstract sculptures, performative situations, scores and experimental workshop formats. Collaboration is a major element of Hesse’s work, next to other joint projects he works closely with Mitra Wakil under the name Hesse & Wakil. In his often experimental formats, Hesse explores new approaches to social, material and structural transformations of society within the rapid development of technology. He uses the possibilities of technologies and materials to investigate in the impact of the digitization process on art and society. In doing so, he reflects on subjects such as human-machine-interaction, copy, glitch, visualisation and the concealment of information. His work is an ongoing process of this translation and transformation, which ultimately leads to questions about memory, visualization, surveillance capitalism and knowledge society.
Hesse is born in Augsburg/Germany, studied with Prof. Olaf Metzel and Prof. Heimo Zobernig in Munich and Vienna, and graduated with a diploma and Meisterschüler (master student) distinction from the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Munich.
2014 – 2016 Hesse was artist-curator at Lothringer13_Florida in Munich. In 2017, he co-organized the residency project Double Road with Bangalore, Karnataka/India. From 2018 to 2020 Hesse had a teaching position at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste HFBK and Hamburg Open Science, he has been a Professor at the HGB Leipzig since 2020.
Fabian Hesses` exhibitions and projects have been shown at the Pinakothek der Moderne Munich, Common Room Foundation New Delhi/ India, Kunstverein Wolfsburg, Akademie Schloss Solitude Stuttgart, Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst Berlin, Haus der Kunst Munich, Goethe Institut Bangalore/ India, 54th Venice Biennale, Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, M1 Boskamp Stiftung Hohenlockstedt, among others.
Hesse has received prizes and scholarships including the theatre prize of the city of Stuttgart and the state of Baden-Württemberg in 2019 with o-team, the Creative in Residence scholarship from the UnternehmerTUM, Center for Innovation and Business Creation at TUM, Munich in 2017, scholarship from the Bösenberg Foundation, Meinersen from 2016-2017, the Debutant Prize of the Bavarian State Ministry of Science, Research and Art in 2014, and the Art Prize of the District of Swabia in 2013. Together with Mitra Wakil, Fabian Hesse had the WimmelResearch-Fellowship at Akademie Schloss Solitude in 2018.