Johanna Reich Germany, b. 1977

Johanna Reich was born in 1977 in Minden, Westphalia, Germany, and lives and works in Cologne. Between 2000 and 2005 she studied fine arts at the Kunstakademie Münster under Professors Peter Schumbrutzki, Andreas Köpnick, Paul Isenrath, and Guillaume Bijl. In 2003 she undertook a guest semester at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg under Professor Wim Wenders, and in 2004 was nominated as Meisterschülerin. In 2005 she pursued further studies at the Facultat de Belles Arts in Barcelona. Between 2007 and the completion of her postgraduate studies, she attended the Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln (Academy of Media Arts Cologne), where she studied under Professors Julia Scher, Mischa Kuball, and Matthias Müller. This exceptional breadth of formation, spanning painting, film, and media art, is directly reflected in the interdisciplinary character of her mature practice.

Reich works across video, holographic projection, performance, photography, painting, and sculpture, often combining these forms within single bodies of work. Her practice is driven by sustained research into the relationship between the human body and digital systems: how algorithms shape the production and reception of images, how databases encode and distort identity, and how the face and body are read, classified, and erased by machine vision. A recurring motif across her work is the act of disappearing from the media-determined world, a gesture she has explored in relation to art-historical precedents from modernism. In "Inner Nature," she investigated the boundaries between the human and the natural world through video and holographic projection. "Resurface" examined questions of female visibility and historical erasure. "Linguphoria," her most recent body of work, explores the relationship between language, sign systems, and the formation of identity. Many of her works are created on the basis of several years of research, in which she investigates gaps in history and the opaque influence of databases on algorithmic image production.

Reich's practice has attracted sustained institutional recognition. She received the Nam June Paik Advancement Award, Cologne, in 2006; the Excellence Prize at the Japan Media Arts Festival, Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo, in 2007; the Konrad-von-Soest Prize, Münster, in 2011; the Luise Straus Award of the LVR in 2017; and the Audience Award at the Discovery Award, Loop Festival, Barcelona, in 2016. She has received project funding from the Kunstfonds Foundation (2019 and 2023), the VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn (2021), the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (2020), the SK-Stiftung Kultur Cologne (2013), and the Futur 21 programme of LWL/LVR (2022). She has held artist residencies at the Künstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral, Bad Ems (2010), at Hangar, Barcelona, supported by the DAAD (2007), and at Laccolade, Paris (2019). Her work is held in public collections including the Museum für Konkrete Kunst, Ingolstadt. She has taught as guest professor at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste München (2020 to 2022) and has held teaching assignments at the Kunstakademie Münster, the Universität zu Köln, and the Hochschule Düsseldorf, among others.

Reich's exhibition history spans major institutions across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Key presentations include solo and featured exhibitions at the Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg (2021); the Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl (2019 and 2021); the NRW Forum Düsseldorf (2020); the Kunstverein Mönchengladbach (2020); the Max Ernst Museum Brühl des LVR (2018 and 2023); the LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur, Münster (2019); the Fridericianum, Kassel (2016); the Kunsthalle Darmstadt (2025); the Museum Goch (2025); and the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, where her work was included in "GLITCH. The Art of Interference" in 2023. She participated in the Venice Biennale context in 2022 and was included in the 25th anniversary programme of the Japan Media Arts Festival, Tokyo, in 2023. In 2025, a solo exhibition, "SPHAERA," opened at the Kunsthalle Darmstadt, and "Lumëndra – der Ursprung der Zeichen" was presented at Museum Goch.

KORNFELD Galerie Berlin has presented Johanna Reich's solo exhibition "Linguphoria," a body of work that investigates the origins and transformations of sign systems, language, and visual communication. The gallery has also presented her work in the group exhibition "Before the Storm" at 68projects by KORNFELD in 2022, and her practice is a central part of the gallery's programme of media and conceptual art. Reich's work continues to evolve through research-driven projects that place the politics of seeing and the ethics of algorithmic image-making at the centre of contemporary artistic inquiry.