Christian Manss was born in 1978 in Eisenach, Germany. He studied in Leipzig, lived in Zurich from 2007 and moved to Dresden 2010. In 2012-2015, he worked also in Oberhausen, where he received a three-year studio grant from the city of Oberhausen and the Ludwig Foundation. Since 2015 Christian Manss work in his studio in Dresden. His work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in South Korea, Switzerland, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, France, Poland, Sweden, Montenegro and the United States. Travel grants have brought him to France, Montenegro, Schweden, Austria, South Korea and the United States. His art is in several collections, such as the Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles.
Latest grants
2021 Project Grant for MOBILISTAN
with Manaf Halbouni from Allianz Kulturstiftung and IFA 2020 Denkzeit-Stipendium, Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen, Germany
2020 Travel grant - Litografiska Akademin, Tidaholm, Schweden
2019 Project Residency „RESEARCH HELDENPLATZ“, Hofburg, Salon Kuefstein, Vienna, Austria
2018 „MONUMENTAL“ with Anne Manss - Denison University, Ohio, USA - granted by the Ohio Arts Council & Mellon Arts Across the Curriculum
2018 Artists’ grant by the city of Dresden, Germany
2017 Travel grant - Budva, Montenegro, Dukley European Art Community
2016 Travel grant - Gangneung, South Korea, Haslla Art Museum
2015 Studio grant – Strasbourg, France by the city of Dresden
2012-14 Studio grant , Museum Ludwig Gallery Schloss Oberhausen and the city of Oberhausen
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Christian Manss works seem hazy, unsettling and multi-layered in the most literal sense of the word. We search for details and connections that might shed light on things, but artist Christian Manss doesn’t make this easy for us. He begins by printing his own photographs onto a sheet of blank newspaper, and then uses a clear varnish to apply this to a canvas that he has already prepared with a coloured underpainting. The varnish makes the newspaper transparent, which brings the colours behind it back out onto the surface. Once the varnish has dried, Manss paints over the collage and then, later, attacks that layer with water, solvents and sponge. What is left is an object partially freed of overpainting. When we first see his works, each one seems fairly uniform in itself. But things start to get confusing when we look closer. If we concentrate hard, more and more overlaps and connection errors come into view. The layers of paint, the fragmented photograph and the sense of alienation all conspire to free our view from the obstructions of the history of places. For a brief moment the scene is endowed with a kind of fictitious innocence, becomes a place so unfamiliar to us that we are free to fill it with our own imagination.