3rd Friday Exhibition
Zhou B Art Center Chicago / IL / USA
Completed installations
In my Inflatable Lotus Flower Art Project, the blue lotus takes center stage, symbolizing healing, beauty, and strength across cultures. Drawing inspiration from scientific research and the natural world, I’ve crafted these inflatable artworks adrift on Lake Milstätter See.
These creations serve as a bridge between our human-made world and the beauty of nature. By day, they offer a serene presence, and by night, they evoke a sense of wonder. „Cosmic LOTOS“ prompts contemplation of our place in the universe.
My work delves into the mysteries of nature, seen and unseen. Whether through installations like Planet Sound or projects like The LOTUS and the ANGEL, I aim to spark curiosity and imagination, reminding us of our interconnectedness with the Earth and each other.
Join me on this journey of exploration as we uncover the profound insights hidden within the inflatable lotus flower’s timeless allure.
Coming from a background in architecture, he was particularly interested in experimental architecture and the works of Buckminster Fuller. From there he started to work with and learn to construct inflatable objects and producing them with a pneumatic manufacturer in Vienna for artists like Jeff Koons and Gerwald Rockenschaub and soon developed and exhibited his own works. His source of inspiration for inventing processes that inform the resulting work is the dialogue that occurs by experimenting with the specific medium. Already observing geometrical structures, in the micro- as the macrocosmos, he started his career by creating inflatable objects such as the CUBE, which draw on the energetic and physical principals of life and the universe in general, at the same time exploring the invisible, the psyche and the unconscious mind. The onset of a myopathy caused him to intensify his creative work in the studio accompanying the development of self-awareness and to deepen his personal healing experience. His works are an expression of these processes which also inform his creative output. Continuing training in disciplines like East-Asian Calligraphy, Martial Arts, meditation and archery, following the mystic yoga path and the teachings of the sufis, studying integral psychology and the philosophia perennis he found the teachings and practice for this life-changing process.
In 2001, he held his first exhibition presenting and performing inflatable objects at the Museum of Contemporary and Applied Arts in Vienna, at the same time studying East Asian calligraphy with a Japanese ZEN master in San Francisco. From these forms of expression, painting as well as developing and experimenting with inflatable objects, he developed over the last 20 years a body of works including writings, performances, videos and sound-installations and concepts to exhibit his art. Curating art projects like the interdisciplinary art project PLANETENKLANG, founded 2018 in Austria, he developed a way to integrate different creative professions and artists in one great experience of art. In 2008, following an invitation by the Chinese artist duo, the Zhou Brothers, to their Zhou B Art Center in Chicago he could deepen his skills on large scale paintings and painting performances. Exhibiting some of his inflatable objects at the MCA Warehouse, for Art Chicago in 2009, then developing an inflatable “Love Spaceship” for Playboy in L.A. and collaborate with Studio Gang Architects, he could already explore his work on an international market. He continued to work in Chicago until the pandemic in 2019 and to travel between the United States and Europe, exhibiting at home and abroad.
His inflatable objects are three-dimensional representations which have their roots in architecture, combined with the mechanical process of inflation and the possibilities to use them in different performative settings. Diffuse forms are transformed into structured shapes, at the same time representing the search and discovery of analogies. In sketches, the artist researches physical as well as spiritual laws, which then become visible in three-dimensional space; thus, an object like the CUBE becomes an expression of geometric principles in life and the universe; the COSMIC EGG offers an analogy to alchemy; the ANGEL WINGS represents an analogy to the realms of the spirit and the psyche, the universe and the power of transformation; the LOTUS stands for the beauty of nature. Rooted in a symbolism which can be found in many different cultures his work addresses the cosmological realm in the same way as the atomic.