Mathias Vef (*1976 in Wiesbaden, Germany) initially studied biology at Goethe University Frankfurt and Humboldt University in Berlin before studying media design at the Media Design Hochschule in Berlin (1999 – 2001) and then at the Royal College of Art in London under Noam Toran and Anthony Dunne (2011 – 2013).

Since his first exhibition in 1998, Mathias Vef has been exploring the intersection of bodies and identities. Working with a variety of body artists – from ballet dancers and acrobats to sex workers – he explores this theme through photography, video, painting with chemicals and more recently through the use of 3D scanning, artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR). The artist describes his work as follows:

“I am interested in the area where bodies and identity meet. And I am inspired by people who see their body as a kind of speculative material, a tool and process of being and ‘becoming’, which I can use as material to deconstruct and rearrange: Distorted bodies from ballet dancers, digitally hacked bodybuilders, resampled trans people, portraits of sexworkers that I’ve melted chemically with a liquid drug. I work with people who experiment with their self and see their body as something fluid. This fluidity is to me a tool to be, to embody and enable to deal with the drama and traumas of life. I collect these m(e)aterials, these embodiments of life, through photos, videos, 3d-scans and artificial intelligence, with which I create images, surreal collages or choreographies in augmented reality that represent to me the utopian state of mind of my subjects, against the ‚natural‘.”

The artist has received numerous awards and has been selected as artist-in-residence, including 2021, Shame Gallery Brussels, Artist in Residence; 2017 Dan Pearlman, Artist in Residence; 2016 Agora Collective; 2016 Living Bauhaus Kunststiftung, Artist in Residence, Studio Residency; 2014 Candid Art Trust, selected artist for the25th Anniversary Exhibition; 2014 Studio Residency, Temoporary Turn Studio Maciek Urbanek, London; 2012 Dissertation ‘I do Me. ‘, awarded ‘Distinction’; 2009 CODE Berlin Unesco City of Design, selected artist; 2008 Create Berlin Ambassador, exhibitions in London, Berlin and Brussels; 1999 Scholarship Looking for Talent Mediadesign Hochschule.

His latest project NUCA (together with Benedikt Groß) is a speculative design and art project that aims to critically examine and question the current development of generative AI in the reproduction of body images. NUCA redefines image creation and uses artificial intelligence to show everyone in their most natural and pure form: Naked, as God created us. Didn’t everyone dream of having Superman’s X-ray vision as a child? NUCA makes this (nightmare) dream come true and turns ideas about privacy on their head. The project aims to shed light on the power of generative image generation through AI in a speculative scenario. Instead of the unsettling phenomenon of anonymous deepfakes, NUCA brings photographers and the photographed together and displays the result directly. NUCA will be presented in the exhibition UNCANNY, which will be on show at the nüüd.berlin gallery this summer.

His work has been shown internationally in solo and group exhibitions in Berlin, London, New York, Sydney, Kuala Lumpur and Brussels.

Mathias Vef lives and works in Berlin. Further information about the artist here.