Biography of Christiane Baumgartner
Artist and printmaker Christiane Baumgartner effortlessly blends the medieval technique of the woodcut with contemporary image production in striking work that is unlike any of her contemporaries’. Playing with the notions of motion and standstill, Baumgartner creates monumental monochrome prints from her own video stills, her scenes mimicking the flickering of a television screen through entirely analogue means. At the heart of the artist’s work lies an inherent tension between the painstakingly slow process of preparing the woodblock for print and the rapid efficiency of digitally capturing images on film. Contrasting the materiality of one medium with the immateriality of the other, Baumgartner’s incisive and intelligent work stands out as one of the most iconic of her generation.
Born in 1967 in Leipzig, Christiane Baumgartner studied at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in her home city before completing a masters in printmaking at the Royal College of Art in London. She is the winner of many awards and residencies, including the Teresa Bulgarini Award for Contemporary Art, Salzburg, in 2009 as well as a residency in Vietnam sponsored by the Goethe-Institut in 2012. She was also a visiting lecturer at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence in 2013 and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015. Baumgartner’s stunning work graces the collections of the MoMA, New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Städel, Frankfurt, amongst many others.
