Residency Vivid Headquarters – Studio Kybra – Germany
Two months inside a world built around light and projection.
Following VOYAGE and the development of his experimental LIGHT FUSION studio, Tommy Balogh received an unexpected invitation to spend two months in Germany at Studio Kybra, the interdisciplinary light-art practice of Mary-Anne Kyriakou and Ingo Bracke, i.e. the founders of VIVID. Kyriakou had created and directed Smart Light Sydney, the event that became the foundation of Vivid Sydney, while Studio Kybra’s practice brought together architectural lighting, installation, public space and light art.
Unlike many of Tommy’s larger exhibitions, the residency unfolded quietly. It became less about presenting a finished body of work and more about being immersed in a different creative environment – one where light, architecture, performance and place were treated as a single language.
Among the projects developed during the residency was a private projection and performance collaboration with Ingo Bracke at Christuskirche, taking Tommy’s paintings beyond the frame and into the architecture itself. His work from the period also culminated in Colour the World, an exhibition presented at Studio Kybra. Both projects are recorded in Tommy’s earlier exhibition history, alongside the two-month residency. His current project archive also retains the Christuskirche collaboration as one of the defining works from that period.
The significance of Germany was not simply international exposure. It placed Tommy inside a working culture where illumination and organic art projection could reshape buildings, public environments and the way people moved through them. Bracke’s own practice is built around transforming existing architecture and found places through temporary light, sound and performance – an approach that closely echoed questions already emerging in Tommy’s work.
The residency became a glimpse of what could happen when painting stopped being confined by its edges – and the surrounding space became part of the work.
That idea would follow Tommy back to Australia, eventually finding new forms through architecture, hospitality and the immersive installations that came next.