Michael Sailstorfer, artist,
born 1979 in Vilsiburg, Germany

Michael Sailstorfer lives and works in Munich. He studied at the Munich Academy of Visual Arts. The artist handles an enormous range of different materials and functional objects—from lamp posts to helicopters, bus stops and cars, caravans to the forest floor—with a kind of audacious architectural alchemy, transforming them into engrossingly dysfunctional sculptures, their previous utilitarianism transformed into follies of uselessness, charm and wit. Sailstorfer has a healthy regard for an object’s formal qualities,
while leaving open the possibility of investing it with fiction or romance. With Knoten (knots) Sailstorfer playfully questions form and function: by altering the material the artist transforms a functional item (the hemp knot) into a sculpture making it useless for its original purpose, but at the same time emphasizing the aesthetic of its physical appearance. Just like in a magic trick, the seemingly soft knots are vertically free-standing, thus contradicting the law of gravity.
In 2009 Michael Sailstorfer held a solo show at PS1- MoMA, New York. He has participated in countless important international group exhibitions such as The Quick and the Dead at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis in 2009; Made in Germany at Kestnergesellschaft, the Kunstverein Hannover and Sprengel Museum Hannover in 2007; Still Life: Art, Ecology and the Politics of Change, the Sharjah Biennial; the Moscow Biennial in 2007; the Yokohama Triennial in 2005 and the Liverpool Biennial in 2004. In Brazil, Sailstorfer participated in Galpão Fortes Vilaça’s inaugural group show God Is Design, in 2007.

Michael Sailstorfer, artist, born 1979 in Vilsiburg, Germany

Michael Sailstorfer, artist,
born 1979 in Vilsiburg, Germany