Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf

Sarah Szczesny
Assistant Professor in Visual Methods

sarah.szczesny(at)rsh-duesseldorf.de

Born in 1979, Sarah Szczensy studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where she was a master’s student under Prof. Rosemarie Trockel in 2009. She currently lives and works in Cologne.

Szczensy’s collage, painting, and video works are put together by disassembling, distorting, and isolating image material like, for example, cartoon film elements. By stretching the boundaries of the various media in which she works, she explores the existential conditions of painting through experimental interventions – using gif and loop techniques, for example, or sound effects. The result is a multidimensionality that gives her paintings a sense of movement and situates them in the cartoon tradition. The process of animating collages, so essential to her work, allows her to bring together formal studies and references from both pop culture history and art history.

Szczesny’s works have been exhibited in Germany and abroad, including at the Neuer Aachener Kunstverein in Aachen, the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen in Düsseldorf, Ludlow 38 in New York, and Deichtorhallen in Hamburg. Szczesny was awarded a Studio Scholarship by the Art Association of Cologne, an artist residency at the Goethe Institute Villa Kamogawa in Kyoto, Japan, and in autumn 2021, a three-month residency at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles.

In recent years, Szczesny has been invited to discuss her artistic practice as a guest lecturer at various universities, including the Düsseldorf Art Academy and HGK Basel, as well as arts institutions like the Goethe Institute Kyoto and festivals like Dekmantel in Amsterdam. These experiences have strengthened her conviction that teaching is a meaningful addition to her artistic practice.

Since 2021, Szczesny has been a Lecturer in Visual Methods at the Institute for Music and Media at the Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf.