Biography

Tobias Post (1969, Bochum) Immersive media artist and painter, member of BBK Westfalen

Tobias Post combines painting, digital light art and sculpture in an artistic practice in which colour, form and movement reach beyond the limits of any single medium. He develops paintings, interactive installations and sculptural works from the interplay of free gesture, set rules and spatial relationships. His artistic roots lie in informal and non-representational painting; he takes up concrete art and sets it in motion.

The focus is on independent artistic work of his own. He combines painterly experience with precise technical execution. Colour, surface, grid and rhythm become experienceable as moving systems; through interaction, viewers become part of what happens in the image. The aim is a clear, robust presentation for museum, institutional and commercial contexts.

Of particular note is the exhibition at the Museum Westfälische Salzwelten (Bad Sassendorf) with the artists' group Hellweg Konkret.

Since 2022 artistic practice has been at the centre of his work; technology is used deliberately as an artistic tool.

In my own words

I was born in Bochum on 4 April 1969. After my Abitur and community service, I studied computer science with art as a minor subject at TU Dortmund. I left my studies early and founded my own software company for computer games.

Until 2022 I worked as a sole trader on dozens of major projects and hundreds of smaller IT solutions, developing web, desktop, 3D, multimedia and graphics-oriented software. I moved through very different settings: start-ups, small and medium-sized companies, universities and corporations. My expert knowledge of IT was set on an ever stronger practical foundation. Looking back, my working life as a software developer reads like a technical art education tailored perfectly to me, and to immersive art in particular.

Art has been with me from advanced-level art at school, through my first exhibitions and picture sales at eighteen, and art as a minor subject within my computer science studies, to a lifelong private engagement with painting, video art and computer art. Artistically, though, after those first successes I concentrated on my non-public, inner artistic work and kept my freedom as a young artist, so that I could go on growing freely and with pleasure.

In 2022 personal losses shifted my focus and gave me the impulse to put my artistic work first and place software development in the service of art - and to bring the two together.

For the first time in my life it is possible for me to bring all my talents together towards one strong aim. Two separate halves within me are growing into one.

In 2022 I changed the purpose of my company entirely, from a software workshop to an art studio and digital studio. Since then my artistic work has been at the centre: I develop paintings, interactive installations and sculptural works, and with digital tools I have developed myself I extend painting into time and interaction.

My exhibition work is central, beginning in 2023/24 still exclusively with painting. In 2025 the focus is on immersive art. Personal exhibition highlights for me are the industrial exhibitions at the Phoenix gasometer in Dortmund and at the Henrichshütte in Hattingen.

I am especially pleased to have been admitted to the Bundesverband Bildender Künstler*innen - BBK Westfalen e.V. in 2025.

Technical background

Real-time systems (among others C++, C#, Qt), 2D/3D/video/audio. Digital installations for sensor-based interaction and generative software.