The artist duo Hartung Trenz (Detlef Hartung and Georg Trenz) is among the significant representatives of text-based projections in the German-speaking world. Since their first collaboration in 1998, they have developed site-specific installations that interconnect projection, architecture, and text in complex relationships. Their works are engaged with the architectural, sociocultural, and historical dimensions of the site.
Their core elements include animated letters, or signs, organized in lines, projected onto architecture and landscapes. Animated as pulsating elements, the text lines divide or connect, define or dissolve, open or close. Circular typeographies and sphere-like formations suggest perspective, depth, and spatiality, evoking a kaleidoscope, or rose window, the sun, or the globe, the iris, or the atom. The animated, moving texts dissolve words from their historical-chronological context.
The starting point for their spatial and architectural projections is existing locations. At the intersection of analysis and association, they develop text material into graphic networks, project them, and observe the interplay of colors, forms, and visual relationships that emerges. The result is typographic experimental arrangements as well as spaces of association that point to the symbolic nature of things.
EXHIBITIONS / PROJECTS
2025 Celle (de), KUNSTMUSEUM CELLE
2025 Innsbruck (at), BERGSYLVESTER
2024 Pula (kr), VISUALIA
2024 Regensburg (de), RE.LIGHT
2023 Gelsenkirchen (de), GOLDSTUECKE
2023 Leeuwarden (nl), LUNA
2022 Graz (at), KLANGLICHT
2021 Berlin (de), SCHLOSS BELLEVUE
2021 Düsseldorf (de), PARLAMENT NRW
2020 Ingolstadt (de), MUSEUM FOR CONCRETE ART (New Building)
2018 Cologne (de), KÖLNER DOM
2018 Tunis (tn), INTERFERENCE
2018 Cologne (de), COLLUMINA
2017 Halifax (ca), RESPONSIVE
2016 Frankfurt (de), LUMINALE
2016 Tunis (tn), INTERFERENCE
2016 Eindhoven (nl), GLOW
2015 Adelaide (au), ADELAIDE FESTIVAL BLINC
2015 Hildesheim (de), LICHTUNGEN
2014 Manchester (uk), SALFORD QUAYS
2013 Jerusalem (il), INTERNATIONAL LIGHT FESTIVAL
2013 Lüdenscheid (de), LICHTROUTEN
2012 Koblenz (de), LICHTSTRÖME
2009 Gdansk (pl), NARRACJE
2009 Loreley (de), RHEINPARTIE
2008 Frankfurt (de), LUMINALE
2005 Oldenburg (de), LEUCHTZEICHEN 05
Collective exhibition activities since 1998
ACADEMIA
2024–2026 Saarbruecken (de), UNIVERSITY OF FINE ARTS, Visiting Professor
1991 Munich (de), ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS, Diploma
BIO
Based in Cologne (de)
1958 Born in Caracas (ve)
LINKS
hartung-trenz.de
@hartungtrenz
CREDIT
AUTHOR Bettina Pelz
PUBLISHED 20 MAY 26