Anna Nero’s artistic practice revolves around exploring various painting techniques and the potential for image-making and representation. Her work navigates between strict geometrical forms and bold, spontaneous brush strokes, blending elements of structure and intuition. Nero often begins with systematic grids and patterns on her canvases, which serve as a foundation for subsequent layers of gestures and forms. Central to Nero’s inquiry is the transformation of paint into both object and space. She elevates the material itself to the forefront of her work, viewing it not just as a tool but as a subject with its own agency. This approach is evident in her playful titles, such as ‘Strokes Trapped in A Grid’ and ‘Hostel’, which reflect her humoristic and ironic perspective. Nero enjoys incorporating references to art history in a postmodern fashion, adding a playful twist to her work.

Anna Nero (*1988) earned her MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig in 2015, followed by post-graduate studies with professor Heribert C. Ottersbach. Her artwork has been showcased in solo exhibitions in the United States, Germany, and Italy, as well as in numerous group exhibitions worldwide. She is also involved in running the Frankfurt-based project and exhibition space MARS. In 2022, Nero served as a guest professor at the Art Academy Mainz, Germany. Her pieces are featured in private and public collections across Europe and the United States, including notable institutions like G2 Kunsthalle, the Museum of Fine Art Leipzig, and the public art collections of various German cities. She is currently a guest professor at Burg Giebichenstein, in Halle.

Johanna Seidel (b. 1993, Germany) is a visual artist based in Dresden, Germany. Her work primarily deals with the subject of nature. Seidel approaches different perceived realities through a lyrical visual language, which involves symbols from history, mythology, and dreams. Blending dreams and reality allows Seidel to create her own world on the canvas. From a palette in which shades of violet, pink, orange, and green play an important role, Seidel develops stories and still images that exist in an atmospheric space, condensing memories and the imagined into abstract moments that become accessible. Seidel received her MFA at Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden and has exhibited in several solo and group shows in the UK, France USA, and Germany.

Laura Sachs (*1985 in Darmstadt) studied Philosophy and Art at Goethe University Frankfurt a.M., before moving on to Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2013. With her background in the field of painting, she continued her studies in the sculpture-focused classes of Hubert Kiecol and Gregor Schneider. She graduated with honor Meisterschülerin in 2018. Laura Sachs works are multi-perspective objects with characteristics of paintings as well as elements of sculptures. Her work was showcased in numerous exhibitions, including at renowned institutions such as K21, Kunstsammlung NRW and Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf. Laura Sachs lives and works in Berlin.

Lou Hoyer (* 1985 in Berlin) lives and works in Potsdam, Germany. She studied fine arts at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) from 2005 to 2011 and completed her Master’s Studies under Prof. Valérie Favre. In 2012 she received the SRE Frida Kahlo Fellowship at the Centro Nacional de las Artes, Mexico City. From 2014 to 2019 Lou Hoyer was the editor of the magazine NICHTSALSSCHOENHEIT – TEXTE, BILDER, PARTITUREN published annually in conjunction with theatre performances and exhibitions. She has shown her work in Berlin, New York, Mexico City, London, and Capetown, among others. Her work has appeared in various magazines, such as Kunstforum International, BOMB, Vice Magazine and Art.

The polyphony of drawing, text and musical performance characterizes Lou Hoyer’s work. Her pastel drawings are condensed daydreams. They walk the line between inside and outside, utopia and dystopia. Every line is a thought. She invents surreal images of female bodies that rub up against social expectations: the woman who paints her body with fish skin becomes a merwoman; In the next picture, the fish tail symbolizes the restrictions that a woman experiences in our society. Lou Hoyer’s large-format charcoal drawings show anamorphic figures. They multiply, break apart and merge again. The aesthetic deformation determines the perception of the body from within. Lou Hoyer reveals the physical act of drawing: the lines follow the waves of distortion and the motif, despite its monumentality, begins to move and takes on something fleeting.

Mahsa Merci (*1990, Tehran, Iran) holds an MFA from the University of Manitoba, Canada, and currently lives and works in Toronto, Ontario. Mahsa Merci is a queer artist who works in various media, primarily in painting and sculpture, to challenge conservative social and political norms, defy the stranglehold of traditional cultures and religions, and celebrate the wide spectrum of gender identities and expressions. Her works aspire to raise awareness in the audience of the hidden facets people may carry within all aspects of their identities. Mahsa reimagines and reformulates the voice of the self to offer an articulate LGBTQ language despite race, roots, color, and culture. She brings together a body of work that establishes new definitions that draw upon textures and gestures which manifest across natural and sociopolitical boundaries. Mahsa Merci has exhibited her works in over forty solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Italy, Germany, UAE, Belgium, Cyprus, Canada, Hong Kong, and Iran. Her works have been published in various well-known magazines globally.

Paulina Semkowicz lives and works in Vienna. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków and FBAUP, Portugal. Her practice is articulated through painting, installation and set design. She exhibited at Galerie Laetitia Gorsy, Leipzig; Austrian Culture Forum, Warsaw; Galeria Presença, Porto, Belvedere 21, Vienna

Philippa Brück, born in 1993, resides and works in Leipzig. She studied theatre painting at Dresden University of Fine Arts from 2013 to 2017, followed by specialization in illustration with a focus on painting at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg under the mentorship of Professor Christian Hahn. Philippa Brück blurs the lines between figuration and abstraction, inspired by classical still life painting and Baroque vanitas motifs. Rooted in her fascination with theater painting, her work reflects theatricality and explores the tension between nature’s beauty and transience. Through dynamic compositions, she captures the eternal cycle of life and change, inviting viewers to delve into her associative visual language. Balancing traditional and digital influences, Brück’s paintings creates a space to explore the beauty and complexity of nature in the 21st century.

Sarah Pschorn is a sculptor living in Leipzig. Her ceramic sculptures are often reminiscent of vessels, containers or vases, which become symbolic carriers of her ideas and thoughts. In her works, she demonstrates an extraordinary understanding of ceramics as a material and at the same time an unconventional and artistically exciting approach to the material. Intuitively, quickly and yet carefully, she balances and stacks forms made of clay and porcelain, exploring the limits of the sculptural mass. Fragments, found objects made of glass or metal and casting moulds are incorporated, as are historically known ornamental forms from the Baroque period or elements from Pop Art and Modernism.

Sarah Pschorn sees her work as a plea for the sweet, the sentimental, for the play between cheerfulness and melancholy, for losing oneself in the form - but also for the confrontation with transience.

Born in Dresden in 1989, she grew up surrounded by baroque architecture and discovered her passion for clay at the age of 5. After studying at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle (2009-2015) and the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, Israel (2012-2013), she moved to Leipzig and opened her studio in 2016. Since then, Sarah Pschorn has participated in many international exhibitions in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Denmark, the USA and Switzerland. In 2023, she presented her largest exhibition to date, Records of Gravity, at the Gerhard Marcks Haus in Bremen with ceramic sculptures and installations on over 400 square metres of museum space. She has also won several prizes and scholarships such as the Monica Biserni Prize of the MIC Museum Faenza (2023), the annual scholarship of the Stiftung Kunstfonds (2022), the Perron Art Prize Frankenthal (2017), Leipzig Connects of the MDBK Leipzig (2018) and the Open to Art Award of Officine Saffi in Milan (2019). Her works are represented in the public collections of the Art Collection of the Free State of Saxony, the Gerhard-Marcks-Haus Bremen, the Grassi Museum Leipzig and many private collections.

Theresa Möller (*1988) lives and works in Leipzig and Montréal. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig (Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst) and received her diploma in painting and fine arts graphics in 2018. Before, she studied illustration and painting at the HAW Hamburg. Since then, she has received several grants and had residencies at Künstlerhaus Eckernförde (Germany) and Fonderie Darling (Montréal, Canada). Theresa Möller has participated in many international exhibitions in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Portugal, Switzerland, and the United States. - Theresa Möller grew up in the German port town of Hamburg near the North Sea. In her early years, influenced by the rich and diverse architecture of the city, she painted abstracted building sites (“Baustelle” in German), developing a visual vocabulary with strong vanishing points. The architecture gradually gave way to a whole new genesis from an inner world, in which nature howls and tormented waters evolve throughout a surrealistic temporality, and figurative elements can only appear if you summon them. This transition of patterns in her paintings occurred when the artist moved to Leipzig in 2014. Theresa Möller is a dreamer with a sharp eye and brisk, precise, and determined gestures. The psychedelic delirium we dive into appeals to colours that are thrown at us. Only then the shapes appear. Nevertheless, the inspiration is not naturalistic. The artist's shades are sweet mallows, powdery blues, fruity oranges and sea green. The forms emerge in the details: leaves, branches and trunks are revealed if you focus. Sometimes, the mineral pigments remind us of those summers when the sky becomes purplish. In other artworks, turquoises become cold as they recall this strange and timeless force that awaits in silence, in the shade. Architectures occasionally reappear through horizon lines and geometric forms created by Nature. The patterns look alive but are not human. We are facing some sort of cosmoramas devoid of protagonists, where the strength and the energy of the shapes build peculiar and eerie worlds for us to wander around. The mystery and fantasy contained in Theresa Möller’s paintings do not encourage narrative. They intentionally leave room for feelings, and we must take time to regard them closely. The artist’s role here is to sublimate the invisible. The sunny tones of her palette are powerful and appeal to the subjective senses of the viewer. On Theresa Mölller’s canvases, the world we live in seems to be afflicted by a lethargic and incurable tragedy that defies a fast-paced and voracious pop culture. Her art may appear like a delusion but sums up the major contemporary concerns of our time.