Artist

Born in Salzburg, 1973

In his interdisciplinary work, encompassing video, performance, dance, theatre, painting, photography, installation, and even puppetry, Markus Schinwald creates mysterious and unsettling atmospheres that hint at their Viennese production context, through references to austere Biedermeier style or to psychoanalysis. His seminal studies in fashion left him with a wide interest in clothing and, furthermore, in the human body’s potential and limitations in both physical and psychological senses. Therefore, his works concentrate on processes of manipulation and alteration of bodies and their surroundings, echoing the transformative potential of cultural construct.
He declares himself a “builder of prostheses for undefined cases,” and alters 19th-Century portraits, for instance, by painting improbable apparatus on the characters’ faces and bodies, such as little bandages, splinters or wires that seem to tie the limbs of their owners together. Markus Schinwald has also developed a series of manipulated pieces of furniture, often using Biedermeier table or chair legs, characteristic of a 19th-Century style valued by the growing middle-class. He saws them off and rearranges them in uncanny ways that often bring out their anthropomorphic qualities.
The Sacks series features such legs tied up in canvas bags, attached to the wall. The half-hidden wooden parts stretch the fabric, thus creating weird and allusive forms. Although the enveloping fabric is reminiscent of the white cloth that is used to cover and protect furniture in inhabited houses, one can easily see the sexual allusion to both male, or female genitals in Untitled (Sacks # 2) .

Exhibitions
Exhibitions
Heartbreak Hotel
Heartbreak Hotel is the first major exhibition outside Belgium of the Vanhaerents Collection. Set to...
06 May 2015 - 15 Sep 2015
Zuecca Projects Space
Venice
Exhibitions
Yes we’re open
Giò Marconi is celebrating an important career that began in 1990 working alongside his father Giorgio...
19 Feb 2015 - 18 Apr 2015
Giò Marconi
Milan
Exhibitions
Shit and Die
Seeking to create an engaging and original project that actively involves the city and which addresses...
05 Nov 2014 - 11 Jan 2015
Palazzo Cavour, Turin
Turin
Exhibitions
Quand fondra la neige ou ira le blanc?
Each exhibition at Palazzo Fortuny is inspired by a desire to trace the multidisciplinary route that...
05 Jun 2016 - 25 Sep 2016
Museo Fortuny
Venice
Exhibitions
Curated by?
The exhibition presents a group of works from the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection, selected by the...
30 Jun 2016 - 16 Oct 2016
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo
Turin
Exhibitions
Markus Schinwald: Solo Show
The solo show presents the Austrian visual artist, who is famous for his anonymous nineteenth century...
30 Mar 2017 - 19 May 2017
Giò Marconi
Milan
Exhibitions
Glasstress 2017
On the occasion of the 57th Biennale di Venezia, Fondazione Berengo presents “Glasstress 2017”,...
11 May 2017 - 26 Nov 2017
Palazzo Franchetti
Venice
Exhibitions
Contemporary Dialogues with Tintoretto
Zuecca Projects, in collaboration with Polo Museale del Veneto and Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia...
20 Oct 2018 - 07 Jan 2019
Galleria Giorgio Franchetti and Palazzo Ducale
Venice
Exhibitions
Ways of Seeing
The collective exhibition is curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, founders of the multi-disciplinary...
03 Sep 2018 - 05 Jan 2019
The NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery
Dubai, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi
Art Spaces
Thaddaeus Ropac London
Galleries in London
Giò Marconi
Galleries in Milan
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