Stephan Huber


Stephan Huber is a German sculptor and object artist.

Life

After his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, Huber received a grant for the P.S.1 studio programme in New York. He has since exhibited internationally, including Documenta VIII in 1987 and the Venice Biennale in 1999 as well as numerous one person shows. Since 2004, he has been a professor at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. Huber lives in Munich and in eastern Allgäu.

Work

Stephan Huber's oeuvre is characterized by a narrative language which distills the conceptional and experiential world of the artist into striking images with immediate emotional impact. Huber often makes himself the protagonist of his works, thematizing his homeland and childhood as well as giving artistic expression to what he sees, reads, and remembers, and thus delineates the social, geographical, and intellectual horizon within which he moves. The autobiographical references—for example, models of radiantly white mountains, upper middle-class interiors, and his parental home—not only are to be understood as aesthetic psychograms of the artist, but also combine with fictional elements and art-historical, political, or literary references so as to give rise to personally colored but simultaneously universal, archetypal symbols of social or emotional states.
One fundamental aspect of Huber's oeuvre is a deliberate play with disturbing estrangement. "In the tradition of Munich Dadaism", his sculptures and installations work with a transposition of the customary context of objects as well as with unusual perspectives, altered sizes, logical paradoxes, and unexpected occurrences. Reciprocally related individual works are often joined into spatial passages which are meant to be explored in succession, for example in the exhibition "8,5 Zi.-Whg. f. Künstler, 49 J." at the Lenbachhaus Gallery in Munich. The sometimes emotionally overwhelming aesthetic through which Huber situates himself in the tradition of the Bavarian-Baroque world theater becomes broken and humanized through a humorous revelation of its mechanisms, an ironic distancing, or an unexpected turn of events.
In addition to space-encompassing installations and works in public spaces, Huber's oeuvre also includes graphic works, films, plays for puppet theater, and performative projects.

Awards