Pia Fries, born in 1955, was a master student of Gerhard Richter. After professorships in Düsseldorf, Karlsruhe, and Berlin, she has been teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich since 2014. In 1999 she attracted international attention at the Venice Biennale, where she was shown by Harald Seemann as part of the "dapertutto"; since then numerous international exhibitions. John Yau, born in 1950, is a poet, essayist, prose writer, and art critic. He lives in Manhattan and teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art and has received numerous awards and fellowships, including from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.