About the Artist

Ati Maier is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice includes drawing, painting, photography, 3-D video animation, installation, performance, and live action video.She was born in Munich, Germany in 1962 and has studied, lived and worked in Vienna, Berlin and New York City.

Maier writes about her working process:

"I start with 3-15 overlapping sketches with which I create multiple layers suggesting the possibility of a novel compositional architecture. For example, I might begin with an abstract grid, add a galactic structure, then landscapes on top. It is in this time-consuming period that shapes begin to form and subside, subdivide and cut through and across one another. I weave the layers of space together in such a way that foreground, middle ground and background along with past, present and future become one dense coherence. Through my process the painting is like an organically growing puzzle coming together. The final image can never be predicted, as it is a direct result of the physical and the mental space I am in when I make the work.

I act as a sampler (as in music) of the abundant information available. Scientific theories, technological and geological models, maps, digital and satellite views, as well as NASA websites, books and magazines form the catalyst and interior armature for all of my work.

The vast open landscape and the big sky of the American West became an obsession as I was riding through it on horseback. I am an explorer, using geographical structures, rock formations, unique earth faults, weather phenomena etc. as visual and conceptual sources. Although my work is largely abstract, it is very much about making invisible energies and wavelengths visible.

Recently, I also began working with 3-D animated videos derived from my drawings. I basically re-build the drawings into a 3D model, making them move through time as well as space. In the animations, as well as my 2-D works, I aim to suggest new visual metaphors for our experience in non-linear, virtual spatial systems."

Maier’s 3D video animation was included in the Fokus Bienial in Lódz, Poland and her paintings are part of the permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art (NYC) and the Museum der bildenden Kuenste Leipzig (Germany), amongst others. She is a recipient of the Pollack-Krasner Foundation grant and a Joan MItchell Foundation grant.

Maier's work has been featured in exhibitions at the Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg (Germany) and “Remote Viewing” at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her work is included in numerous public collections, including the New Mexico Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art, The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection, New York; Parrish Art Museum, Montauk, NY; Aspen Art Collection; MART, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Rovereto and Trentino, Italy; Staedtische Galerie Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, Germany; Museum der bildenden Kuenste Leipzig, Bergmeier Collection, Germany; BAM Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA; Guilin Art Museum, Guilin, Guangxi, P.R. China. She currently lives in Brooklyn and New Mexico.


Ati Maier's work is included in the latest issue of New Observations.