Köbberling/Kaltwasser
Folke Köbberling, born in Kassel in 1969, studied art at Kunsthochschule Kassel and at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver. Martin Kaltwasser, born in Münster in 1965, studied art at Nuremberg's Kunstakademie before studying architecture at Technische Universität Berlin. Köbberling/Kaltwasser live in Berlin and work around the world.
With their subtle, critical, and complex buildings and structures Köbberling/Kaltwasser work on an aesthetics of resistance against our life surroundings with its unidimensionality. With their construction projects, they make various forms of urban living visible and politically effective. They offer alternatives to our habits of consumerism. The materials used are gained from resources that are normally go unnoticed. In 2010, they built Jellyfish Theatre for the Oikos Theatre Festival as part of the London Festival of Architecture, a spectacular structure that was erected with the help of over 100 volunteers in the heart of the British capital. That same year, they constructed a gigantic bulldozer using materials left over from the Vancouver Winter Olympics. In 2011, the artist couple erected a 140 square meter roof structure at Berlin's Haus der Kulturen der Welt made of tens of thousands of plastic cups left over after a marathon.
The two have held lectures, workshops, and courses at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, Metropolitan University in London, Universität der Künste, Berlin, Kunsthochschule Kassel, ETH Zürich, and Kunsthochschule HFBK Hamburg. Winners of the Senatsstipendium des Berliner Senats, Köbberling/Kaltwasser spent a year in Los Angeles in 2009/2010. They have participated in numerous solo and group shows, most recently a solo show at New York's Jack Hanley Gallery (2011) and in group shows at ZKM Karlsruhe, Lentos Museum, and OK Centrum für Gegenwartskunst in Linz (all 2012).