Benjamin Hirte
Benjamin Hirte’s work engages with cultural history and the construction of realities. Drawing on standardized elements from infrastructure and design, as well as canonized forms from art history, he creates new sculptural settings. In his recent figurative works, Hirte has taken up recurring motifs from art history as both formal and metaphorical elements. Through his choice of material and scale, he alters their meaning, suggesting functional details without assigning them a specific use. Moving between body and device, ornament and utility, his objects appear like relics of a possible future that feels both familiar and estranged.
Exhibitions
Solo exhibitions
2024 Phantasia, Kornhäuschen und Arkadenhof der Kunsthalle Jesuitenkirche, Aschaffenburg (DE).
Edge of Town, Layr, Vienna.
2023 Solo Presentation, Art Cologne, Cologne (DE).
Favoriten, Niloufar Emamifar & Benjamin Hirte, Kevin Space, Vienna.
True Sculpture, Christian Andersen, Copenhagen.
2021 Benjamin Hirte, Nancy Lupo, MAK Center, Los Angeles, CA (US).
2020 First Houses, Galerie Layr, Vienna.
The Jurist, Anna Sophie Berger & Benjamin Hirte, CICCIO, New York, NY (US).
2019 Trust, Sydney, Sydney (AU).
2018 Huntington Beach, Galerie Layr hosted by JTT Gallery, New York, NY.
2017 Benjamin Hirte, Chadwick Rantanen, Museo Canonica, Rome.
2015 Jürgen Ponto-Stiftung, Zollamt – MMK Frankfurt (DE).
2012 the classic mob ballet, MAK, Vienna.
2011 Grazer Kunstverein, with Lone Haugaard Madsen, Graz (AT).
Group exhibitions
2024 Time and Again – Particolare, Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna.
Pauli Preis, Kunsthalle Bremen, Bremen (DE).
Borrowed Scenery, Lantz Sculpture Park, Düsseldorf (DE).
2023 Our Porcelain Thoughts, Drei, Cologne.
2022 Vienna Biennale for Change, MAK, Vienna.
Life and Limbs, Swiss Institute, New York, NY.
2019 Poetiken des Materials, Leopold Museum, Vienna.
2018 Face to Face, Ernesto Esposito Collection, Palazzo Fuscione, Salerno (IT).
2013 A wavy line is drawn across the middle of the original plans, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne.
Publications
Modest Homes, Benjamin Hirte (ed.), Mousse Publishing, Milan, 2023.
Die Räuber, Benjamin Hirte, Saxpublishers, Vienna, 2020.
