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Karin Sander (born 1957 in Bensberg, North Rhine-Westphalia)[1] is a German conceptual artist. She lives and works in Berlin and Zurich.
Sander studied at the Freie Kunstschule Stuttgart and at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart with Jürgen Brodwolf and others. In 1989–1990, she received a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD-scholarship) for New York, where she attended the Independent Study Program (ISP) of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
In 2000, Sander was part of a group of 15 artists and architects who bought a complex of buildings, where the Prussian army had once manufactured its uniforms, in Berlin's Moabit. Sander’s share is two levels of a three-story building, one on the ground floor and the other on the third floor, with a combined space of about 5,800 square feet.[2]
In her exhibitions, Sander refers to existing situations and addresses their institutional and historical context. With her mostly site-specific interventions, she intervenes in the structures of institutions, changes them, highlights facts and invites participation. The seemingly familiar is rethought, it becomes the starting point of an exploratory process. She uses various media, including painting, sculpture, drawing, electronic media, film and photography.
In a 1994 Projects show at the Museum of Modern Art, Sander polished painting-sized squares of wall throughout the building to a porcelainlike high gloss.[3] Her Mailed Paintings (begun in 2004) are standard-sized and primed canvases of various shapes that are sent to exhibitions without any kind of protection; while being on display constantly, they collect and display traces and marks of their journey.
Sander has been invited to guest professorships at the Iceland University of Arts, Reykjavík (Listaháskóli Íslands, 1993), the CalArts (California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles), 1995), the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe (1995–1996), the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart (1997–1998) and the Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland (2003). From 1999 to 2007, she was professor at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee and since 2007, she holds the chair for architecture and art at the ETH Zurich Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
Sander is a member of Deutscher Künstlerbund (Association of German Artists),[4] in 2007, she was elected to the Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts) Berlin. Since November 2021, Sander has been director of the fine arts section there.[5]
Sander was a member of the juries that selected Katharina Sieverding (2017)[6] and Candida Höfer (2024)[7] as recipients of the Käthe Kollwitz Prize.
In 2023, Sander and architect Philip Ursprung represented Switzerland at the Venice Biennale of Architecture.[8]
Sander's work has been exhibited worldwide, particularly in Europe and the United States, notably in solo exhibitions at Museion, Bozen (2020), Kunst Museum Winterthur (2018), the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (2011), Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (2010), K20 Kunstsammlung North Rhine-Westphalia, Düsseldorf (2010), Temporäre Kunsthalle, Berlin (2009), Kunstverein Arnsberg (2008).
Sander's work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art,[9] the Metropolitan Museum of Art,[10] the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,[11] and the National Gallery of Canada.[12]
