Jakob Mattner, born in Lübeck in 1946, studied at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin until 1972. A scholarship awarded by the Berliner Akademie der Künste took him to the Villa Serpentara in Olevano. He lived in Rome on a DAAD scholarship from 1973 to 1974. Supported by the German Interior Ministry, he spent the next year in the Cité des Arts in Paris. In 1981 he was awarded an arts scholarship by the Kunstfonds in Bonn. He received the Villa Romana Prize in Florence in 1977 and the arts award of the Heitland Foundation, Celle in 1994.

Jakob Mattner's image compositions and installations have already been exhibited in numerous cities at home and abroad, including Munich, Berlin, Geneva, Paris, Barcelona, Moscow and New York. In 1996 the artist designed a »light curtain« for the Hebbel Theatre in Berlin. Other »curtains« have been on display since 1999 at the Hessische Landesbank, Frankfurt/Main. He has exhibited works from his series »Zwielicht« (Twilight), compositions of light and shadow, at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. At EXPO 2000 in Hanover he was responsible for setting the stages for »Wörter:Welt« and »Lied:Strahl« at the theatre in the German pavilion. Since 2001 Mattner has been stage designer at the International Literature Festival Berlin. In 2002 the Moritzburg castle, Halle/Saale, presented his exhibition »Camera Lucida«. At the Salzburg Festival Mattner was stage and costume designer for the performance of »Musiquette Poétique« which was directed by Robert Gernhardt and Martin Mosebach.

Mattner designed the exhibition »View into the Sun« as a result of his two-year exchange with astrophysicists from the Potsdam Einstein Tower. It was featured in the museum Berlinische Galerie in 2005 for the first time and went on to be shown in in the Museum of Wiesbaden and in the New Museum in Weserburg. Mattner lives in Berlin.

© Foto: H. Klappert 2003