Biography of Julian Rosefeldt
Julian Rosenfeldt is an artist of high acclaim whose work merges both narrative film and complex film installation. Since the early 1990s the German artist has used the mediums of film and photography to reflect his fascination with the stereotypes, clichés and repetitions that permeate both history and modern popular culture.
Julian Rosenfeldt recently attracted widespread attention with Manifesto, an elaborately staged film installation shown at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof. Comprised of 13 films, the work questioned the artist’s role in society, and reflected today’s longing for manifestos. In each film the artist created a different setting and different character embodied by the Australian actress Cate Blanchett. Each of these characters then reiterated words from famous historical manifestos (by André Breton, Kazimir Malevich, Claes Oldenburg, and Jim Jarmusch among others) with the aim of highlighting both the theatricality and literary vigor of various artist group’s manifestos.
This concept of panoramic, multi-channeled projections surfaced in Julian Rosenfeldt’s earlier works as well. In Detonation Deutschland, a piece for which he collaborated with Piero Steinle, the artist collected excerpts of original footage capturing building demolitions in Germany from 1945 to 1990. Across 7 screens, Julian Rosenfeldt sought to expose the damage of the Second World War, as well as the power that changing ideologies could exert on the creation of modern urban utopias and city planning.
Julian Rosenfeld has also carried out extensive photography projects throughout his career. In his consistent attempt to depict the many facets existing within the cultural realm, his photography exploits have explored subjects varying from Oktoberfest in his hometown of Munich, to the abandoned archives of German newspapers.
With a background in architecture (having studied it both in Munich and Barcelona) Julian Rosenfeldt was invited in 2009 as a guest lecturer at the Media Art and Media Design Faculty at the notable Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. Although he is based in Berlin, he continues to teach at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich.
Since 1997 Julian Rosenfeldt has exhibited internationally, having participated in the Bienal de São Paulo and the Athens Biennal. He has taken part in exhibitions at P.S.1 in New York, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, and the Royal Academy of the Arts, London. His work can be found in the permanent collections of MoMA in New York, the Saatchi Gallery in London, Kunstmuseum Bonn and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris among other renowned international institutions.