Gottfried Bechtold

Born 1947 in Bregenz, Austria

Lives in Hörbranz, Vorarlberg, Austria

In his work, Gottfried Bechtold focuses on the extension of the concept of art, above all of sculpture. Based on sculpture and influenced by the art of post-minimalism, Land Art and conceptual art, Bechtold initially experimented with different media such as photography, film and video. In all the exploratory and experimental character of his works, the question of the sculptural form and its real time and real space is essential. At the same time, he is always concerned with isolating his artistic activity not as a pure model of thinking, but being as much understandable as possible to a wide audience. So he always seeks a relation to reality, to people, to everyday processes, to general understandable physical rules and the crucial factors of his work, time and space. That means his actions, sculptures, films, objects and textual works are always based on the receptive main role of the observer and the user. 

Bechtold is fascinated by the paradox that cars embody: invented to increase mobility and the efficiency of transport, the car now stands for gridlock, threatening us with accidents, traffic jams and ecological problems. In 1971, Gottfried Bechtold had the first Betonporsche, a cast of his own vehicle, a Porsche 911 presented at Galerie Krinzinger in Bregenz.

Gottfried Bechtold completed an apprenticeship as a stonemason and had longer stays in Great Britain, the USA and Canada. In 1973/74 he became a Visiting Artist at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Canada and later Visiting Professor at the Cornell University in Ithaca, USA and the Karl-Franzens-University in Graz, Austria.Important solo exhibitions include Neue Galerie Graz Joanneum (1993), Kunsthalle Wien (1996), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2003, 2006), various exhibitions in Lisa Hämmerle gallery and Maximilian Hutz gallery, like his solo show “50 Jahre Betonporsche” – to name one. The cooperation of Krinzinger gallery and the artist goes way back to the 1970s when Bechthold had several exhibitions in the gallery’s spaces in Bregenz and Innsbruck.