SALZBURG.- For his first ever solo exhibition in Austria, Swiss artist Beni Bischof has revamped the FOTOHOF premises into an exuberant experience space that offers deep insights into the artist's process-driven work method. Dada, arte povera and appropriation art are the inspiration for his photographs, videos, texts, drawings, paintings and objects, which he interlaces with enigmatic irony to create wall-filling collages and space-shaping installations.

The seductive semblance of consumerism in high-gloss magazines and the shrill aesthetics of pulp fiction thus provide a blueprint for his transformations into non-conformist imagery determined by image anarchy. 'Beni Bischof's visual world is all about life bursting with vibrant energy, elation and misery, confusion and farce, all of which he depicts with great relish in his image and text-based works. As a result we find ourselves literally stumbling time and again over our own inadequacies.' (Nadia Veronese)

Beni Bischof will present a booklet created especially for the exhibition at the FOTOHOF. It showcases his artistic objectives and concerns, the way in which he toys with images and materials from everyday life, which can certainly be understood as a criticism and corrective of the art world as it currently stands. Publishing has been an important part of Bischof's oeuvre from very early on, as evidenced by 75 laser copy publications created over the past ten years.

Beni Bischof (*1976) lives and works in St. Gallen. His works have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions including Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Helmhaus Zürich, Marta Herford, La jeunesse est un art im Aargauer Kunsthaus, Fumetto Festival Luzern, Space Oddity at CCA Andratx Art Foundation Mallorca, The Fourth Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Kunstraum Düsseldorf, CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art Bordeaux. Beni Bischof is a two-time recipient of the Swiss Art Award from the Swiss Federal Office of Culture. In June 2014, Edition Patrick Frey will publish his Psychobuch. This extensive publication is simultaneously an overview of Bischof’s work and an artist’s book in its own right.