Our Practice
We are a collaborative husband-wife team making work that explores the relationships between our home (house and family), histories, memories, and the mise-en-scène of daily lifestyle and consumerism. We have a long history of working together and literally tearing down and rebuilding our physical environments to playfully critique our lives. In our practice nothing is precious, everything is game, and we want our art to be accessible to all audiences through the use of humor.
Bio
Hillerbrand+Magsamen have worked collaboratively for over 20 years on videos, photography, installations and interdisciplinary performances. They work with process and embrace the unpredictable. As momentary experiences become magnified through their diverse practice, the viewer is given insights into the edges of their world. They are not interested in fitting into a defined box, but rather expanding boxes through collaboration with others and experimentation. Balancing humor and tension, they amplify their home life as they jump on trampolines, make mountains out of toys, cut holes in their house and build rocketships in their backyard. They explore their relationships to each other and society with an uncanny sensibility that merges the real and unreal.
Hillerbrand+Magsamen’s work has been presented at festivals including Ann Arbor Film Festival, Fusebox Festival (Austin, TX), CounterCurrent Festival (Houston, TX) and Diffusion Photography Festival (Wales, UK). Exhibitions include the Grand Rapids Art Museum (Grand Rapids, MI), Everson Museum (Syracuse, NY), and Center for Photography Woodstock (Woodstock, NY).
They have received grants from Sustainable Arts Foundation, Austin Film Society, Houston Arts Alliance and Experimental Television Center and participated in residency programs: ower Manhattan Cultural Council (New York, NY), Experimental Television Center (Owego, NY), Wassaic Projects (Wassaic, NY), Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT), I-Park (East Haddam, CT), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (New York, NY), Experimental Television Center (Owego, NY), Elsewhere (Greensboro, NC), Lawndale Art Center (Houston, TX) and Santa Fe Art Institute (Santa Fe, NM). Stephan Hillerbrand is a recipient of two Fulbright Fellowships (Germany) and MacDowell Colony (Peterborough, NH) residency.