August 2025

Karla Gruss

graphic designer  + photographer

Karla Gruss is a multidisciplinary artist and designer whose work blurs the boundaries between the natural and the artificial. With a background in graphic design and photography, she explores the tension between human identity and evolving technologies, particularly through the use of AI, digital collage, and manipulated photography. Her work often juxtaposes surreal, synthetic forms with organic environments, creating disorienting yet poetic compositions that investigate embodiment, memory, and the fragility of perception. Rooted in research spanning realism, eco-psychology, and post-humanism, her practice reflects on what it means to be a body in an increasingly technologized world. Karla grew up in Düsseldorf, Germany, surrounded by fashion and art. Her mother, fashion designer Ira Walendy, often involved her in creating prints for her clothing lines, which has influenced Karla’s interest in graphic design. Over the years, the biannual releases of her mother’s collections has become a central subject of Karla’s photography, as she began shooting the campaigns twice a year. These images have evolved into one of her most personal ongoing series, Fabric in Us, a study of motherhood, daughterhood, and the transmission of identity. Through her lens, Karla explores the dynamics of the female gaze and the intimate, shifting relationship between mother and daughter. Her mother’s clothing designs, always a quiet reflection of her inner world, become a bridge between them, shooting once in Düsseldorf and once in New York each year. The series is both a record and a reflection: of how a mother and daughter mirror and shape each other, and of the literal and emotional fabric that continues to bind them through creative work. Check out Karla’s recently launched creative agency “Office Karla Gruss”, often referred to as “Okg” under www.karlagruss.com. The agency shapes visual identity within the fashion, arts, and start-up sector.