Nikolaus Gansterer | Artist
Nikolaus Gansterer is mentor of Zoe Köbrunner.
Nikolaus Gansterer, * 1974, lives and works in Vienna. He studied Transmedia Art at the University of Applied Arts Vienna with Brigitte Kowanz and completed postgraduate studies at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht/ Netherlands. He is a founding member of the Institute for Transacoustic Research. He has been teaching at the University of Applied Arts Vienna since 2007where he was a visiting professor in the Artistic Doctoral Program from 2016 to 2019, and currently is senior lecturer and board member of the Applied Performance Laboratory.
As an artist, performer and researcher, Nikolaus Gansterer explores the relational field between drawing, thinking and acting. In his installations and performances, he examines the translatability of phenomena of perception into artistic contexts. His transmedial work focus on ephemeral and emergent processes, unfolding their immanent structures of interconnectedness. In doing so, he questions the imaginary threshold between nature and culture, art and philosophy.
Gansterer’s fascination with complex diagrammatic figurations led to the extensive publication project Drawing a Hypothesis - Figures of Thought (Springer, 2011), which investigates the ontology of visualization forms in contemporary art and science. From 2014 – 2018, he led the interdisciplinary artistic PEEK research project Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line (de Gruyter, 2017) developing innovative forms of notation between drawing, writing, and choreography. Since 2019, he has been directing Contingent Agencies (Hatje Cantz, 2024), a transdisciplinary PEEK research project focused on experimental diagramming of atmospheres funded by the Austrian Science Fund.
Gansterer has been honored with the City of Vienna Award for Fine Arts (2024), the RC Award from the Society of Artistic Research (2019), and the MAC International Art Award from the MAC Metropolitan Art Centre in Belfast (2018).