For his first ever solo exhibition in Austria, Swiss artist Beni Bischof has revamped the FOTOHOF premises into an exuberant experience space that offers deep insights into the artist’s process-driven work method. Dada, arte povera and appropriation art are the inspiration for his photographs, videos, texts, drawings, paintings and objects, which he interlaces with enigmatic irony to create wall-filling collages and space-shaping installations.
The seductive semblance of consumerism in high-gloss magazines and the shrill aesthetics of pulp fiction thus provide a blueprint for his transformations into non-conformist imagery determined by image anarchy. “Beni Bischof’s visual world is all about life bursting with vibrant energy, elation and misery, confusion and farce, all of which he depicts with great relish in his image and text-based works. As a result we find ourselves literally stumbling time and again over our own inadequacies.“ (Nadia Veronese)
Beni Bischof will present a booklet created especially for the exhibition at the FOTOHOF. It showcases his artistic objectives and concerns, the way in which he toys with images and materials from everyday life, which can certainly be understood as a criticism and corrective of the art world as it currently stands. Publishing has been an important part of Bischof’s oeuvre from very early on, as evidenced by 75 laser copy publications created over the past ten years.