Born in 1962 in Steyr, Austria, lives and works in Vienna, Austria. Late 1970s School of Arts Graz. Late 1980s stage design at Westfälisches Landestheater Castrop, Germany; 2004—06 professorship at University of applied Arts Vienna; 2007—2017 Curator of Kunstverein Weikendorf Austria; 2011 ISCP New York.
Art awards, a.o. 2001 Otto-Mauer Prize Vienna, 2008 Viktor-Fogarassy-Prize, 2012 Austrian State’s Prize for Applied Arts.
Many solo exhibitions, a.o. Galerie Peter Pakesch (1987, 1987); Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman (from 1998 in a yearly basis); Galerie Bernard Jordan Paris and Zurich (2008, 2014); 2012, Logik und Eigensinn, Kunsthaus Graz; 2016, Michael Kienzer. 24 von 274.668 Tagen, Klangraum Minoritenkirche, Kunsthalle Krems Austria, ; 2017 Kunsthaus Zug Switzerland, Gerhard Marcks Haus Bremen Germany; 2024 Museum MUDIMA Mailand .
Important exhibition participations, a.o. 2019 Descrete Austrian Secrets curated by Margareta Sandhofer, The Galaxy Museum of Contemporary Art, Chongqing, China; 2016 The Body Extended: Sculpture and Prosthetics curated by Lisa Le Feuvre, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds; 2011, Glasstress 2011, 54th Biennale di Venezia, Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti, Venice; FÜNF RÄUME, austrian cultural forum, New York;
He continuously develops art projects in public space, a.o. since 2005 in front of MAK Vienna, at 2007 Fiac Paris, since 2009 Bruno Kreisky Park Vienna, 2009 in front of mumok Vienna, since 2017 Metro Station Troststraße Vienna.
“Through his incidental choice of material, Kienzer certainly plays on the aesthetic of the ‘ready-made’, but on closer consideration his work always turns on sculptural questions such as pressure, equilibrium, posture, reclining, opening, closing, stacking, standing or clasping. His objects also shift between the categories of assemblage and construction. […] Kienzer’s work imposes major demands on its viewers. They are called upon to understand the structure and syntax of the work and its placement in the space. In this perception, valences arise. Individual elements, switching points or ruptures are identified. The figure then exhibits an order and, with one-hundred-percent certainty, at least one element which breaks through this order – and hence, accentuates it all the more.” (Arie Hartog, Presentness without Grace, Observations on the work of Michael Kienzer)
“The Austrian sculptor Michael Kienzer is one of the most innovative and versatile representatives of his generation, which radically changed sculptural creation starting from the mid-eighties and even further in the nineties. His research reveals multiple ways of renewing sculpture by rethinking the compositional possibilities of plastic structures, namely through the use of various materials and objects that incorporate connotations and ties with different areas of life into the structure of meaning. His extremely complex installations created in recent years, which often unfold on the ground and thus evoke a specific virtual-imaginary association of the urban landscape, are especially characterized by his method of accumulation of different references. While Michael Kienzer’s work constantly seeks to redefine the sculptural body’s relations with space, and in this respect attempts to expand the concept of sculptural creation, he guides the viewer over a terrain of self-organizing material constellations that, through the various references inserted, delineate some unexpected and surprising narratives connecting different levels of thought. The exhibition at the Fondazione Mudima presents an overview of Michael Kienzer’s sculptural thinking.” (Lóránd Hegyi, Davide di Maggio, September 2024)
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