Norbert Brunner
b. 1969, Hohenems, Austria
Norbert Brunner is an Austrian object, conceptual and installation artist. Brunner’s mirror objects reflect not only the viewer, but also superimpose messages across their visual path, insisting they become an interactive part of the installation. He studied on the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Currently, Brunner lives and works in Vienna and New York City.
Brunner’s concepts represent the necessity of an artistic discourse in the social process – an opening to the “other = everyday”. This implies a distanced attitude towards one’s own practice, critical judgment and the ability to put oneself in different (cultural) contexts and to avoid self-references whenever possible. His work revolves around cultural diversity, class structures as well as popular. culture and models of perception – topics, theirs – not
Finally brought about by the development of the differentiated information society – complexity detach itself from the main theme of the “self” and the individual and address the concepts and problems of authorship or copyright.
In his works, Brunner breaks the conventions of different art genres -sculpture, video, photography and installation – which transcends the traditional repertoire of artists and at the same time evades the danger of art being banished into new aesthetic conceptual ghettos.
In doing so, he chooses a visual language that calls into question traditional perspectives, his conundrum between the two- and three-dimensional manifests itself above all in his preoccupation with everyday objects and signs.
Traditional content, symbols and signs are “distorted”. The work aims to activate the fields of experience and perception and offer the recipient sufficient material to experience their own daily environment more consciously and in a more differentiated manner. Seeing is then a multiple look at several meanings on different levels, an exploration of generated irritations.
Brunner generates objects from the “source” of everyday life that are neither images nor symbols, rather they convey perceptual structures that invite the viewer to participate in the creation of high and low (art) in order to allow him to participate in the discovery of contemporary art.
Art serves as a model of life and Norbert Brunner would ultimately like to explain the development of human consciousness itself to be a plastic act.