Michaela Kölmel

Michaela Kölmel (1956 - 2007) was a German artist and university professor from Karlsruhe.

Her artistic work included drawings, sculptures, site-specific installations, and interventions in public spaces.

Working in the tradition of minimalism prominent in the 1960s, Kölmel explored the complexity found in the simple and elemental.

Her work examined the contrast between forms with a straightforward and unspectacular exterior and those with a mysterious, luminous interior, using such materials as highly polished copper tubes, stainless steel sheets, and mirror glass.

Concept, process, and material determined her work.

Kölmel transformed these materials into a wall- and floor-related works.

From 1980 to 1986, she studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe under Prof. Hiromi Akiyama and Prof. David Lauer.

She was awarded the Graduate Scholarship of the State of Baden-Württemberg and further scholarships took her to the Cité des Arts in Paris (1992).

She also used them in site-specific productions to connect spaces and generate unusual fields of perception (Installation MultiMediale 2 and ZKM 1992, Installation Orgelhalle 1994, Installation Galerie Rottloff, 2006).

Using materials that reflect light, Kölmel created complex sensorial spaces of high intensity with simple means; she contained dense formal language that opened up difficult dialogues between the work, the viewer, and the room.

In her drawings, Kölmel preferred foil, graphite powder, and a cutting knife to conventional paper and pencil.

She created arrangements of memorable lines through cuts on the dark gray, slightly shiny graphite surface.

With their relief-like appearance and the special treatment of the materials, her graphic works subtly weave interfaces between dark and light.

Kölmel's work is part of public collections, amongst which the Ministry of Science and Art of Baden-Württemberg, the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, and the Städtische Galerie Karlsruhe [de].

They are also in numerous private collections, such as the Museum für aktuelle Kunst - Sammlung Hurrle [de] and the collection of Reinhold Würth.

She also received a lectureship at the University of Pforzheim (1995/99) and Ahrenshoop (2000), funded by the Kunstfonds Berlin.

In 2002, Kölmel became a professor at Mainz University of Applied Sciences, where she taught courses including Interior Design, Sculpture, Drawing, and Art History until her death in 2007.