Kurt Hentschläger

Chicago-based, Austrian-born artist Kurt Hentschläger creates audiovisual installations and performances. Speaking in Columbus for the first time, he’ll present his extraordinary body of sound- and installation-based work, the immersive nature of which reflects on metaphors of the sublime and the human condition, as well as the impact of new technologies on both individual and collective consciousness.

Hentschläger’s works have characteristically been visceral and immersive, as in ZEE (2008) and FEED (2005–6), with extreme perceptual effects, composed from light, sound, and fog. These works physiologically transport the viewer quite literally into another world. His CLUSTER (2009–12) series builds on the uncanny by portraying 3D representations of humanoid creatures that can only exist in dynamic flux, seeming to swirling and flow like the wind, apparently unhinged from the screen that they are projected on. His most recent, emerging body of work traces the perception of “nature” in the 21st century. Between 1992 and 2003, Hentschläger worked collaboratively within the artist duo Granular-Synthesis.

Hentschläger’s work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; MoMA PS1 and Creative Time, Inc. in New York; Musée d'Art Contemporain Montreal; Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna; ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany; Museum of China, Beijing; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City; and the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania.

Cosponsored by Ohio State’s Department of Art’s Art & Technology program.