Artists in residence

Patrick Ostrowsky (*1991) works at the intersection of sculpture, architecture, and installation. His work investigates how identity, memory, and function are embedded in everyday objects and domestic environments. Drawing on his cross-cultural background and rural roots near the Bavarian Forest, he explores extimacy—the condition where private experience becomes public through space and material.

His sculptural assemblages incorporate found objects, technological remnants, and traditional materials such as steel, concrete, and clay, creating forms that negotiate between practical function and sculptural independence. Often inspired by overlooked or transitional spaces, Ostrowsky’s work examines how emotional and cultural histories are inscribed in built environments.

During his residency, Ostrowsky is developing a project of intimate spatial interventions that explore domestic interiors as sites of public projection. Rooted in his experience living between Germany and Switzerland, the work reflects on the shifting boundary between private life and public identity. Combining sculptural installation with spatial storytelling and referencing DIY and Slavic vernacular construction, he emphasizes improvisation and the accumulated construction of meaning through making.

His work has been exhibited internationally including Kunsthalle Mulhouse (France, 2024), Kunsthaus Baselland (Switzerland, 2023), Kunstverein Munich (Germany, 2022), Kunstverein Wiesbaden (Germany, 2015), Palazzo Madama (Italy, 2021), Pinakothek der Moderne (Germany, 2017), MACRO (Italy, 2016) and Cobertizo (Mexico, 2024)

MUSIC
PIANO 

Born in 1992, Josquin Otal started the piano at Conservatoire régional de Lyon. In 2010, he entered the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse of Paris in the class of Anne Queféllec and then Denis Pascal. He has already performed chamber music, recital and in various orchestras in festivals in France and abroad. 

INTERVIEW

What changes and developments are to be noted in your work thanks to the residency at the Cité internationale des arts in Montmartre?

“Actually, my residency at the Cité internationale des arts coincides with the arrival of my child and a life together as a threesome. This arrival has, by necessity, established a different relationship on a daily basis. Probably the biggest change. In terms of creation, I was able to establish links with several partners in Île-de-France in the management of my writing project, in the artistic, scientific and dissemination fields. 

One of the most striking openings is the one to the spatial imagination, initiated with astrophysicists from the Paris-Saclay campus. I discovered – and this is only the beginning – a vertiginous universe, closely linked to my artistic aspirations. I am currently in the process of transposing the notion of vertigo into my practice in the search for life in Space through two space missions (Corot and Plato). This research leads me to collaborate with visual artists and an electroacoustic composer in the design of a series of installations and scenography for a show.”

An anecdote about your residency at the Cité internationale des arts, on the Montmartre site?

“Rather than anecdotes, it’s a very special rhythm here in Montmartre. The daily passages in front of the Nasser lodge (guardian on the Montmartre site) sometimes punctuated by coffees, the arrival of artists from the other side of the world with whom we exchange and with whom we may no longer see, the couple settled there since the re-urbanisation of the Montparnasse district in the 1960s, our son Biriam who passes from arm to arm with a smile, the daily visit of a former resident who comes to recharge her batteries between the trees in the garden, times of availability and others of withdrawal, the sounds of machines sometimes or hammered blows on the stone that make people say that someone is creating something somewhere…”

BIOGRAPHY

Musician and writer, Milan Otal regularly collaborates with ensembles to rework the ritual dimension of the concert by writing texts and booklets.