Martin Wöhrl

Biography

Born in 1974 in Munich, Germany
Lives and works in Munich, Germany

Martin Wöhrl’s wide-ranging practice routinely incorporates reinterpreted motifs and strategies drawn from the history of art, architecture, and design and is characterized by an elliptical skirting of the borders between form and function. He uses found objects and scraps or materials sourced from budget DIY and hardware stores to craft minimalist sculpture that owes much of its identity to the original components. Strategies of juxtaposition and mimicry inject humor into his work, poking fun at cultural norms and traditional signifiers of value. Both master craftsman and utter hack, Wöhrl marries a strong aesthetic sensibility with a canny knowledge of his medium to toe the line between form and function.

Martin Wöhrl was born in 1974 in Munich, where he studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste and later at the Glasgow School of Art. His art resides in public and private collections throughout Europe and the United States, including a number of large scale public installations. He received the Lothar-Fischer prize in 2011 and has been the recipient of numerous other grants. His work has been widely exhibited at venues internationally, including Kunstverein Ingolstadt, Ingolstadt; CCA Center, Mallorca; ArtMetropole, Toronto; Neues Museum, Nuremburg and the Stadtische Kunsthalle, Munich.