Karl F. Stewart

Biography / Exhibitions

Email

About the Artist

Karl F. Stewart was born in the States in 1950. After military service in the Navy on a nuclear ballistic missile submarine, he studied existential phenomenology in psychology and philosophy at Duquesne University, In January 1974 he became an early member of the Pittsburgh Filmmakers Association during its founding when it started out in a basement in East Liberty, Pittsburgh. There Stewart followed a three-month 2.5-hour-a-week class in photography. Six months later after an interview with Bill Strickland at the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Artist-in-Residence photography grant for two years to work in an inner-city community arts program. As part of the program he also worked as a photographer for the Carnegie Museum of Art and Assistant Director for the Manchester Bidwell Photographic Training Center. When the residency ended Stewart taught photographic design at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. It was during these first years of photography that he freelanced for Associated Press, Pittsburgh bureau. Back at University again, he studied journalism and Latin American Studies at Ohio University, after which he worked as a photojournalist, journalist, assistant editor for small newspapers in Ohio, Virginia and W. Virginia. Seeking an experience abroad, in the early 1980s Stewart left the States and moved to Italy where he taught English. In 1986 he became a Professor of English at the Università degli Studi di Torino, and later also a Professor at the Università del Piemonte Orientale, Novara and Director of the language program at Scuola Università di Management d'Impresa, Pinerolo, Italy. During a 15-year period he taught business language communication courses to CEOs and top management in major corporations in Turin. He wrote a number of books for the study of English developing the notions of The Mathematics of Tense Construction and Eggshell Time. Though not having taken even one photograph for 27 years, Stewart was encouraged to start doing photography again in 2008. In 2009 he resigned from University and moved to San Francisco, California (2009-12). He later did photography and video out of Dusseldorf, Germany (2012-16). Presently he is working out of France. In 2019 Stewart became a member of the French La Maison des artistes. He has been, and still is, living in France and Italy for more than 30 years. He speaks English, French and Italian.

About his Work

The themes in Stewart's work are eclectic. Because of the media he uses, video and photography, he believes that all physical locations possess a peculiar frequency signature. This would suggest that each venue is energetically different from another and therefore requires a new approach when looking for an image. Consequently, it is the location which determines the technique to use when creating the image. Stewart believes the artist simply permits himself to be a vehicle for portraying the impressions perceived. Inspiration in his view is 10% an abstract intuition and 90% working incessantly on that vague notion hoping it develops into something of beauty. It is the search for John Ernst Worrell Keely's celestial harmonics in a vacuum in a photographic image of everyday life. To summarize Stewart's approach to art in one sentence :  Creating Art is allowing yourself to be used for a higher ideal, and the higher ideal is aesthetics.

VIDEO
WOW Jubilee III Köln - I Don't Need Their Voices - Cologne, Germany March

2019
PHOTOGRAPHY
Kunstverein Germersheim - Vanishing Beauty . three-person - Germersheim, Germany November
BASA (11éme Biennale d’Art Sacré Actuel) - Lumièr Lumen Lux - Lyon, France October-November
Salon d'art Regain . Palais de Bondy, Lyon, France September
Salon d'art Chapelle Saint-Etienne, Beaune, France September
Salon d'Art Biennale, Château Chalon, France May/June
Maison Fusier - Alice in Düsseldorf . solo - Ferney-Voltaire, France April - May
Millenaire Abbaye Saint-Philibert - Lumière . Lumen . Lux . solo - Tournus, France Apri - September

BOOK
Lumirère . Lumen . Lux, 120 pages, 52 images, one page of text translated into four languages (English, French, German, Italian), France

2018
PHOTOGRAPHY
Église Saint-Valérien (constructed in 1008) - Vanishing Beauty . solo - Tournus, France September
Cabinet Françoise Floret - Out of Focus . solo - Ferney-Voltaire, France June - July
8éme Biennale Rencontres Européens du Portrait, Bourbon-Lancy, France July-October
9ème Biennale Internationale d'Art Contemporain de Marcigny, Marcigny, France July-August

VIDEO
Mitte Media Festival, Fata Morgana Gallery - Animaux Découpage - Berlin, Germany

PUBLICATIONS
Corridor Eelephant Magazine - Alice in Düsseldorf - France
Musée Magazine - San Francisco Top to Bottom - New York
Magazine 43 - Alice in Düsseldorf - Taiwan,

AWARDS
Artiste de l'année de la ville 2018 - Tournus, France
8éme Biennale Rencontres Européens du Portrait Photographique . Mention Special Social 2018 / San Francisco Portraits, Bourbon-Lancy, France

2017
PHOTOGRAPHY
Galerie Anja - Vanishing Beauty . solo - Tournus, France July - August

2016/17
VIDEO / PRINTED IMAGES
Research, creation and development of three videos - Buda Goes to Pest . Transgenesis . Searching for Spirituality in a Webcam (video + printed images)

2015
PHOTOGRAPHY
Ruhr Biennial, Duisburg, Germany

VIDEO
Memorial for the Victims of Terror, (artvideoKOELN - I Don't Need Their Voices - Cologne, Germany
Visualcontainer - Video of Shadows Title A B or C - Milan, Italy
Cologne OFF Spain - I Don't Need Their Voices - Avila, Spain
Heathcote Film Festival - My Shadow an Illusion of Me - Heathcote, Australia
19° Festival de Cine de Lima - Video of Shadows Title A B or C - Lima, Peru
Carnival of e-Creativity - My Shadow an Illusion of Me - Shillong, India
Berlin Conversations Up Down Nowhere - Komarom, Hungary

2014
VIDEO
Currents International New Media Festival - Images in a Nondescript fountain - Santa Fe, New Mexico
Contemporary Art Ruhr, - Animaux Découpage - Essen, Germany
Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival - Images in a Nondescript fountain - Hawick, Scotland
Festival International Signes de Nuit - Video of Shadows Title A B or C - Paris, France
Centre International pour les Arts Vidéo - Worlds within a World - Lille, France
International Short Film Festival Berlin, (Best of the Zebra Poetry Film Festival) - My Shadow an Illusion of Me - Berlin
VideoBabel - Video of Shadows Title A B or C - Cusco, Peru
Tehran International Short Film Festival - My Shadow an Illusion of Me - Tehran, Iran
Zebra Poetry Film Festival - My Shadow an Illusion of Me - Berlin
Reset Mixed Arts Festival - Berlin Conversations Up Down Nowhere - Munster, Germany
Center for Digital Art - My Shadow an Illusion of Me - Brattleboro, Vermont
Szczecin European Film Festival - Video Art (curated screening,) - My Shadow an Illusion of Me - Szczecin, Poland
Façade Video Festival - My Shadow an Illusion of Me - Plovdiv, Bulgaria
Cologne OFF International Videoart Festival - Video of Shadows Title A B or C - Cologne, Germany
Kansk Video Festival - Berlin Conversations Up Down Nowhere - Kansk, Russia
Perth Revelation International Film Festival - My Shadow an Illusion of Me - Perth, Australia
Walthamstow International Film Festival - My Shadow an Illusion of Me - London, England
Taos Shortz Film Festival - My Shadow an Illusion of Me - Taos, New Mexico
Berlin International Directors Lounge - Video of Shadows Title A B or C - Berlin

PRESENTATIONS
Z-Bar KulturProgramm (presentation of selected works), Berlin

AWARDS
Amsterdam Film Festival . Best Experimental Film . My Shadow an Illusion of Me, Amsterdam, Netherlands

2013
VIDEO
Contemporary Art Ruhr - Animaux Découpage - Essen, Germany
Currents International New Media Festival - Animaux Découpage - Santa Fe, New Mexico
Joshua Tree Art Gallery - San Francisco Street Portraits - Joshua Tree, California
International Streaming Festival for Audio Visual Art - K 20 - The Hague, Netherlands
Artgrease TV - San Francisco Street Portraits - Buffalo, New York
BlackBox Filmmuseum - Animaux Découpage - Dusseldorf, Germany
Experiments in Cinema - Animaux Découpage - Albuquerque, New Mexico
Berlin International Directors Lounge - Animaux Découpage - Berlin
Berlin International Urban Research Program - The Unearthly Beauty of Simulated Nature in Comtemporary Architecture - Berlin

2013 and earlier
PHOTOGRAPHY
Kaunas Photo Festival . M.Zilinskas Art Gallery of the National M.K.Ciurlionis Art Museum, Kaunas, Lithuania 2012
Carnegie Arts Center, Turlock, California (part of an Ansel Adams retrospective) 2012
Gallery 28, San Francisco, California 2011
Dorothy Herger Gallery . Solano College of Arts, Fairfield, California 2010
La Biennale Internationale de l'image, Nancy, France 2010

PUBLICATIONS
Regards . Revue de Photographie - Shah of Iran Protests, Washington, D.C. 1977 - France 2012
Cerise Press - Pittsburgh 1970s - USA 2010

AWARDS
National Endowment for the Arts Artist-in-Residence photography grant for two years, USA 1974 - 76

BOOKS WRITTEN WHILE AT UNIVERSITY
BeginnersTense Practice Warm-Up
Thank God for Tense Structures
The Mathematics of Tense Construction
Conditionals Which Condition Our Lives
Prepositions Have Meaning in Life, too
Function Practice
Questtion Words

All Rights Reserved © 2020 karl f. stewart