bio
Swiss-born multi-media artist Katja Loher presents her works as organic sculptural forms, or Videosculptures. Loher’s nearly seamless fusion of the technological with the organic reflects the digital world of magic she creates. Each piece addresses ecological urgencies, such as the plight of pollinators, abuses of technology, and the future of humanity, while simultaneously drawing attention to the intrinsic beauty of the life sustaining processes that support our planet. Her pieces are the product of a collaborative effort between creative talents. Ballerinas take on the form of small creatures in a multicolored game of perspective and scale that ennobles the existence of tiny beings. Performers intertwine to form letters, words and questions, while costumed dancers dressed as animals mimic the somatic or sonar communication inherent to different species.
Katja Loher was born in 1979 in Zurich, Switzerland, she lives and works in New York City.Loher’s work has appeared internationally in many solo and group exhibitions including: Core Club, New York, USA (2017); Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT, USA (2016); Anya Tish Gallery, Houston, TX (since 2009); NBMAA, New Britain, CT, USA (2015); TelFair Museum, Savannah, Georgia, USA (2015); World Expo Museum, Shanghai, China (2014); Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa (2014); C24 Gallery, NY, USA (since 2013); MuBE, Museu Brasileiro da Escultura, São Paulo, Brazil (2012); Venice Architecture Biennale, Venice, Italy (2010); MAXXI Museum, Rome, Italy (2010); United Nations Pavilion, Shanghai Expo, China (2010); Gallery Andres Thal- mann, Zurich, Switzerland (since 2010); Biennale Chongqing, China (2009); Siggraph Asia, Yokohama, Japan (2009); Art Digital, Moscow, Russia (2005) and the State Hermitage Museum, St. Peterburg, Russia (2005). Katja Loher’s work is featured in numerous notable private and public collections including Credit Suisse Collection, Zurich, Switzerland, 21C Museum, Kentucky, USA, Anthem of the Seas Art Collection, Miami, USA, Jorge Perez Collection, Miami, USA, eN Arts Collection, Tokyo, Japan and Horsecross Collection, Perth, UK. In the last years the artist has received several awards including TPC CreaTVty Award from the Swiss TV Production Center, as well as a number of distinguished artist residencies in New York, Berlin and Beijing. Recently Loher’s work has been commissioned for large-scale Art & Architecture projects at the new headquarters of SwissGrid, Switzerland (opening in spring 2018), Related Group/Jorge Perez, at SLS Hotel, Miami, USA (2016), and Oasis VIP Lounge, at Bogota Airport, Colombia (2015).
COLLABORATORS
Andrea Liberni was born in Padova, Italy. He graduated at the University of Architecture of Venice, and lives and works in Milan since 2003. He performs an important role for the planning and visualization of Katja Loher’s larger projects and commissions. Liberni’s work experience as an architect ranges from interior design to landscape design, not excluding the graphics and the organization of events. Liberni worked for 7 years as the Art Director of Marcatti & Associates S.R.L. He organized countless design and contemporary art events in Zona Tortona, known as Design District in Milan. In 2010 he returned to his dream: Landscape Design and Art. As a member of the team Atelier del Paesaggio, he participated in national and international competitions, such as Lausanne Jardins (CH), Metis Garden Festival (CA), Concorso Parco dell'arte, Mantova (IT), among others. Andrea is inspired by nature and the questions of identity. For over a decade he translates his creative passion into multimedia installations, including painting, sculpture, and video. He has exhibited his work throughout Italy at many notable events, festivals and art spaces, such as Therapy of living at Venice Architecture Biennale (2016); Inermi, Storie Contemporanee Gallery, Roma (2018); Giardini di Leonardo, Design Week, Milano (2019); Corpora, il Pomo da Damo Gallery, Imola (2019).
Juan Pablo is a Colombian composer, producer and Singer-songwriter based in Cali. Since the beginning of 2020 he is designing sound tracks for Katja Loher’s multi-sensorial art pieces with the concept to hear images and see music. At his Evol Studio he is working on several prestigious music productions. Recently he produced and composed the soundtrack for the award-winning shortfilm WIÑANA – crecer, directed by Alexander Gomez. Juan Pablo is a founding member of Creative Culture, an electronic music band, which took off shortly after founded. Launched by Indu Record Label Moonphase and supported by esteemed Producers, his band reached excellent releases with their latest album Remember the Future EP. He has published a children story book entitled “Niña Aventuras”, that includes wonderful music tracks, which contain messages of ecology and the importance of caring and protecting nature. In his work as a musical inteupreneur he writes songs that support psychological processes in therapy. Guided by professionals he is composing lyrics about self-care, the importance of all our relations following the concept “If you heal emotions, you heal your body and you heal your soul”.
Japanese musician / composer Asako Fujimoto is now based in Paris and Berlin. She was raised in Osaka, moved to New York and build her background as a electronic musician in analog synthesiser scene as well as composing using computer from early midi-software sequencing era. As musician, she is vocalist and plays synthesiser. She sings for producers, bands, her own solo projects. She also often sample and modify her voice as sound elements in her composition as well as other various acoustic sounds. She met Katja Loher and started multimedia sound design since 2005 and the collaboration continues until today. Now she is working visual / electronic music project call Cosmic Berry as well as several multimedia projects for theatres and installations in her new home base, Europe.
Gian Maria Annovi is a Los Angeles based poet, scholar, and translator. As a poet, he has published four collections of poems and his work has been included in a range of anthologies and translated in English, French, and Spanish. In 2006, he was awarded the Mazzacurati-Russo Prize, and in 2014 the Achille Marazza Prize for poetry. Annovi is the author of Altri corpi: poesia e corporalità negli anni Sessanta (2008), a study corporeality in the experimental poetry of the 1960s, and the editor of Antonio Porta’s selected poems Piercing the Page (2012), Fratello selvaggio: P. P. Pasolini fra gioventù e nuova gioventù ( 2013), and a trilingual edition of Amelia Rosselli’s Impromptu (2014). He is currently an assistant professor of French and Italian at the University of Southern California.
Japanese-born Michiko Sakano came to the United States when she was nineteen. She graduated from Syracuse University and received a fellowship to attend the Massachusetts College of Art, where she earned her MFA. She has created chandeliers and other lighting pieces for Isadore Design, been represented at Clio, and been commissioned by Jorge Pardo and the Lindsey Adelman Studio. Sakano is interested in the expression of kitsch in Japanese POP and American culture. Having grown up in the Seventies, her work is influenced by the colors and materials of the era, as well as by her family’s business, kimono making. Through the fragility and temporality of glass, Sakano strives to express her aesthetics. She continues to expand through a diversity of form, color, and shape. Collection: The Corning Museum Exhibition: LVMH Craftsmen in New York 2010
Saori Tsukada is a New York based performance artist who works in various genre such as theater, puppet/mask, dance, film and voice-over. Her collaborators of past & current includes choreographer Yoshiko Chuma, video artist Katja Loher, composer/theater artist John Moran, director/writer Keishi Nagatsuka and has performed at venues like The Kitchen, Brooklyn Museum, DTW, PS 122 in NY, SOHO Theater (London), Melkweg (Amsterdam), The Arches (Glasgow), Forum Freies (Düsseldorf), among others. Tsukada was twice nominated for Best Actress at Dublin Fringe Festival (’05 & ’08).
The raw value of live performance is what fuels Butoh dancer Azumi Oe. Mesmerizing, shocking and playful movement is choreographed with meticulous timing, conspiring a visual relationship between the inner and outer human dimensions. Azumi wields her physical form as an expression and exploration of full individuality routed by the notion of collective oneness. Following eight years with New York-based company Vangeline Theatre and as Assistant Choreographer/Principal Dancer for Butoh Master Katsura Kan, azumi O E makes a continuous effort to exceed artistic constructs. She works as Dancer/Choreographer for Video Sculpture Artist Katja Loher and regularly develops experimental projects through solo pieces and collaborations with artists of various mediums. Notable co-operative works span Experimental Film with Nicholas Motyca, live performance with composer Takuya Nakamura, “Impulsive Instrument” with Bassist Sean Ali, and upcoming DUO with bassist Tim Dahl.