Franz Ackermann was born in Neumarkt St. Veit, Germany, in 1963. He studied art at the Akademie er Bildenden Kunste in Munich and Hochschule fur Bildende Kunst in Hamburg. In 1991, he received the DAAD grant, which allowed him to make his first trip to Asia, settling for a year in Hong Kong. Traveling has become fundamental in his works, experimenting with practices inspired by situationist deviation and psychogeography *. He uses photographs and sketches done in pencil, ink and watercolor, taken during voyage, to make mental maps. They are not mimetic reproductions of the territory but instead a synthesis of the physical and mental world. From these, he elaborates vertiginous agglomerations of vibrant colors, which confront the viewer with a collapsed perspective of pictorial, geographical and architectural space. For Franz Ackermann, the voyage and the experiences that he lives through are part of the creative process.

* Psychogeography is a proposal of situationism in which one tries to understand the effects of geographical environment based upon emotions and people’s behavior. One of its best-known strategies, deviation, is an urban hike without specific direction, following the pulse time.

 In November 2012, Franz Ackermann will present his most recent work in Faena Arts Center’s Molinos Room: a 2800 sq. ft. site-specific, creating his biggest mural ever. To achieve it, he will travel to Buenos Aires, where he will photograph the city’s highlights, to create a new mental map. He will work during two months composing his mural, which will consist of 20 panels of painted wood, which will be subsequently assembled in the room.