Christian Schwarzwald

1971, born in Salzburg (Austria)

Lives and works in Berlin (Germany) and Vienna (Austria)

Christian Schwarzwald works with drawings. His idea of drawing is that of an all-encompassing and unrestricted medium. As drawing is everything for Schwarzwald, almost everything is drawn into his universe. Faces, abstract patterns, architecture, plants, objects, etc. are rigorously worked through and combined in blocks to build installations and entire rooms which embrace the visitor upon entering. No longer is a single drawing seen as just that, but newly as part of a more complex system of imagery. With an analytical mind, Schwarzwald creates an encyclopedic world of drawing that stands face-to-face with our contemporary world and questions and challenges its views. 

Schwarzwald also shows a great understanding of drawing, ranging from simple sketch and graphic shorthand to complex editions, paintings, spatial pieces and installations. As a point of departure, drawing is, of course, first and foremost, something simple – everyone can draw. And for this reason, he believes that drawing in particular is capable of developing the most diverse expressions in the visual arts, simply because it maintains the connection to primal “signs”, that is the very beginning of the description of the world.

Christian Schwarzwald was born in 1971 in Salzburg, lives and works in Vienna and Berlin. He studied at the academy of fine arts, Vienna and the academy of fine arts, Athens. From 2017, he holds a professorship at the academy of fine arts, Vienna. Selected solo exhibitions include Kunstverein Kunsthaus Potsdam, Germany (2021), Kunstraum Friesenstrasse, Hannover (2020), Ebersperger Berlin (2017), Galerie im Traklhaus Salzburg (2016) and many others.