Carl Maria Kemper is a conceptual artist living and working in Hamburg. He studied at the msa I münster school of architecture (Master of Arts in Architecture) and worked in this field before joining various expeditions of the artist Julian Charrière and Johannes Förster to polar regions of the earth, mining areas or coal power plants for several years. The resulting works of Julian, such as Towards No Earthly Pole or Controlled Burn has been shown at MASI Lugano, Dallas Museum Of Art, MOMA San Francisco and the Langen Foundation Hombroich, among others.

Through these strong impulses from conceptual work with space through architecture, contextual art and the environment, in the sense of the ecological, but also social relations, Kemper has found the way to express and translate his own concepts into works. Impressions of intense stays in fragile ecosystems, affected by the climate crisis like in Greenland, Iceland or the glacier regions of Europe, as well as places of causation like Coal Mining Areas such as Lützerath in Germany, among other things, shape the concepts of his work today and influence his constant impulse to conceptual artistic engagement at the intersection to activism. Social areas of tension in general that surround and affect us, are also reflected in his work which are multimedia-based.

The decision for a specific medium, material, form, extent, or tool to work with to formulate a project always arises from the necessity and the narrative of the particular subject matter. From each topic that he deals with, a nucleus is to be isolated and distilled down to the essentials in a work. From this simplicity, complex relationships can then be identified and made accessible. Some works can be momentary photographs that are analyzed, expanded and deepened in connection with a textual essay or interpretation. They are often objects, traces and impressions that he brings back from field studies, which function simply through their removal from the site as a kind of piece of evidence or forensic documentation of destructive processes for example. They are shown like readymades in relation to other works, solo or through marginal processing or modification as relics and memories of conditions or sites or even as a space for interpretation that can link the past with prospects for the future.




Selected Exhibitions & Recognitions

2024
You Look Into Everything, Solo Show, Mommsen35 / PrivatRaum, Berlin
Irgendwas mit Natur, Blurred Edges, Group Show, Hinterconti Artspace, Hamburg
Notes For Supplement Existing Knowledge, Group Show/Project, Hamburg, Aarhus (Denmark)
Portraits of Climate, Group Show/Collaboration with CLICCS, University Hamburg

2023
Leaving Holocene, Group Show, Mom Art Space, Hamburg
12 x 1, Galleries Association Hamburg, with Tom Reichstein Contemporary, Solo Show, Jupiter First Floor, Hamburg
Verstrickt, Zerbröckelt (Entangled, Crumbled), Group Show, Tom Reichstein Contemporary, Hamburg

2022
Climate Art Festival, Group Show, Sandtorkai, Hamburg
POSTION, Group Show, Fabrik der Künste, Hamburg
Group Show, Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven
Neustart Kultur Stipendium, Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn (Scholarship, Foundation Art Fund, Bonn)

2021
Union, Solo Show, Kunsthaus Sootboern, Hamburg
Admission to the Professional Association of Fine Artists (BBK), Hamburg
Hamburger Zukunftsstipendium für Bildende Kunst, BKM (Future Scholarship for Fine Arts, Hamburg)