Central College will welcome the works of Markus Haala to the Mills Gallery in the Lubbers Center for the Visual Arts from March 23 to April 20. His exhibit is titled “Nature Morte.”
An artist’s reception will be held at 5 p.m. Thursday, March 24, in the Mills Gallery.
Growing up in Germany during the postindustrial era of the Ruhr District, the western part of the country with an infamous history of centuries of heavy coal mining and steel production, Haala’s childhood memories of an ever-changing landscape profoundly influenced his artistic interests. These experiences laid the groundwork for his research and studio practice.
Haala has been fascinated by the ways we are shaping the world through augmented technologies. Inspired by contemporary environmental studies and concepts such as hypernature, Haala often adapts new media fabrication methods and the integration of industrial materials that are part of the ongoing modification of the natural world.
According to Haala, his current studio practice seeks to explore “new definitions of nature originating from the Anthropocene, the term for the geological age in which human intervention into the biosphere has become the foremost influence on climate and environment.”
Haala received his bachelor’s in fine arts from the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and his MFA in visual arts from the New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire, where he studied with artists Mark Dion, Mathias Kessler, Michael Oatman and Craig Stockwell. He is an alumnus of the School of Visual Arts prestigious Artist Residency Program in New York City, New York, and currently serves as assistant professor of new media and communication, head of the MediaLab and chairman of the division of new media at William Penn University in Oskaloosa, Iowa. Haala lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and frequently travels to the Midwest.
