Hammerstiel Robert F.
Robert F. Hammerstiel was born in 1957 in Pottschach, Austria. He lives and works in Vienna, and completed his studies at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. In 2011, he was awarded the Lower Austria Honorary Prize for Media Art.
Recent solo exhibitions include: 2012: Faust Kunsthalle, Hannover. 2011: Nexus Kunsthalle, Saalfelden. 2011/2009: Lukas Feichtner Gallery, Vienna. 2010/2008/2006: Michèle Chomette Gallery, Paris. 2008: Landesgalerie Linz. 2006: Museum der Moderne Salzburg. His latest group exhibits include: 2011: Zonen_prekär, KUNSTSAELE, Berlin. 2011: The Presence of Absence, Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, USA. 2010: Mediatorzy/Mediators, National Museum in Warsaw. 2010: Mediations Biennale Poznan, Zamek Culture Centre, Poznan.
Artist Statement:
“For years, Robert F. Hammerstiel has explored our eternal yearning for happiness, security and bliss, and the projected desires associated therewith, in his conceptually developed photographic series, video works and installations. He is interested in the descriptive mechanisms of the advertising and consumer society in which these longings are presented, continually remade and turned into stereotypes, and which lead to the creation of artificial surrogates such as homes, pets, potted plants...
He sees his works, which oscillate between fiction and reality, not as criticism of the desire for happiness, but as a means of scrutinizing the wishful thinking and identities produced by the consumer industry.” (Petra Noll, Vienna 2012)
contact:
www.hammerstiel.net
hammerstiel@chello.at