Since 2010, Philipp Schwalb has been experimenting with and questioning the animation of color and figuration in images, their communications, conditions, impacts and frameworks. With practices such as Painting als adjektivale Instelling, Mnemeosyne.picture.Atlas, BilderCommons, Image-Constellation-Panels and Artlanguages = social figurations, he translates personal stories and social-artistic questions into, onto and out of images, their transformative processes, their contained details and their active complexes. He often expands his core painting practice to include other visual forms, exhibitions, poems, raps, diagrams, inverted objects, teaching, texts, workshops, panels, publications & conventions.
Since 2011, he has been working on a research project on Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne.Atlas. He co-founded Forschungsgruppe Mnemosyne in Hamburg in 2012 and co-curated an exhibition at the ZKM Karlsruhe in 2016, in which the entire Mnemosyne.Atlas was shown. In 2017, he co-founded the MNEMOSYNE Study Groups in Zurich and Geneva. In 2020, he initiated the Mnemosyne.Atlas.Läb in Berlin, which has developed into an international forum and hybrid format between online and in-person meetings. Until now he organized 31 MALäbs with 26 artists.
Philipp Schwalb has exhibited or curated at the following venues, among others: Agence de Voyage, (Paris), Kirchgasse (Steckborn), New Toni (Berlin), Le Frac Lorraine, LE CAP (Lyon), Kunsthalle Langenthal, Balcony (Lisbon), Kunsthalle Marcel Duchamp (Cully), Kunsthalle Basel, ZKM Karlsruhe, Kunstraum Munich, Villa Romana (Florence), Niklas Schechinger (Hamburg), New Bretagne (Essen), David Castillo (Miami), Galerie Christine Mayer (Munich), Bernd Kugler (Innsbruck), Produzentengalerie (Hamburg), Forde (Geneva), and others.
Investigating E/Iconomic Sediments
“Investigating E/Iconomic Sediments” is a series of four monthly discursive and image-based assemblies, hosted by the current artists-in-residence Dafni Melidou and Philipp Schwalb at Goethe-Institut Rotterdam, dedicated to image-constellations (Iconomy). The overarching theme of the upcoming assemblies is the interpretative complexity and current societal importance of discussing the concept of “Economy”.