Sandbichler is a conceptual sculptor. Starting from the plane, he develops form and space by folding, creasing and reshaping geometric volumes. The traditional craft of origami, which he learned in Japan, Buckminster Fuller’s principles of architectural construction, and the packaging industry serve him as technical inspirations when “abstractly developing the plane into space in a minimalist serial raster,” as Florian Steininger put it.

In 2011, the artist attracted a lot of attention with his exhibition Wahrheit ist die Erfindung eines Lügners (lit. Truth is a liar’s invention) at the Galerie im Taxispalais in Innsbruck, which produced direct political references through the use of various news texts that covered the surfaces of sculptures and spatial installations. In the current exhibition Sandbichler consistently builds on his sculptural vocabulary and takes a closer look at the tradition of abstract sculpture. A sluice made of coarse steel grating leads us into the exhibition hall itself, in the right-hand wing of which we finally, and surprisingly, arrive at a ceiling-high semicircle made of modularly formed cardboard elements that reminds us of a sound studio. Sandbichler inscribes the room, as it were, with a new grammar, inside which he positions sculptures made of smooth concrete, synthetic resin casts textured like cardboard boxes, a large, ceiling-high relief consisting of several modular components, glassed-in paper folding works, etc.

Peter Sandbichler (born in 1964) lives and works in Vienna. He studied at the Art Students League in New York, with Wander Bertoni and Bruno Gironcoli at the University of Applied Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and was a post graduate at the New Media Department of the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. Since 2007, he has been a board member of the Wiener Secession artist association.

International exhibitions in galleries and art institutions since 1995, e.g. 1995 46th Venice Biennale, Austrian Pavilion (with Constanze Ruhm); 1996 knot.project, New York; 1999 Your private Sky, Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich; 1999 copy&paste – drag&drop, Kunstraum Innsbruck; 2001 Lebenskapsel, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; 2002 Galerie Grita Insam, Vienna, 2002 Variable Stücke, Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck; 2004 Niemandsland. Modelle für den öffentlichen Raum, Künstlerhaus, Vienna; 2005 project space, ARCO, Madrid; 2007 B Lounge, Galerie Belvedere, Vienna; 2008 Accumulation, Pékin Fine Arts, Beijing; 2010 sustain, Galerie Grita Insam, Vienna; 2011 Wahrheit ist die Erfindung eines Lügners, Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck; 2011 Der Künstler ist anwesend, Kunstraum Bernsteiner, Vienna; 2012 schwarze Schafe, design for a public square, Stockerau

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