Herwig Kempinger

Herwig Kempinger (1957) is one of the few Austrian media artists for whom photography has become an exclusive component of his artistic work. With his construction site works, he returns to the oldest conceivable artistic method: paint and brush. He projects onto watercolor paper or onto screens slides of already prepared photographic material that he then paints in a positive/negative with watercolors. By transferring the image by hand to another medium, photography initially becomes a service-provider for its own image. Since 2004, the artist has also worked on photographs that Kempinger calls part of his “temporary volumes.” At issue here are small bubbles that are caught in a permanent state of change, surface and disappear. The artist sees these photographs in direct conceptual proximity to the construction site watercolors and as a continuation of his studies on immateriality. The works, which the artist usually presents on generally large-format panels, appear cool and yet seductive: light spaces where with the help of camera technique, colored illumination, and digital processes the illusionistic possibilities of photography are presented and at the same time subverted.

Herwig Kempinger has taken part in numerous international exhibitions, for example at  Neuen Galerie, Graz (2008), Museum der Moderne Salzburg (2006), Vienna’s MUMOK (2005 and 2006) or Biennale São Paulo (1994). In 2007, Lentos Kunstmuseum dedicated a comprehensive retrospective to his work.