Biography

Lois Weinberger * 1947 in Stams / Tirol † 2020 in Vienna
lived in Vienna and Gars am Kamp, Lower Austria

Lois Weinberger worked on a poetic-political network that draws our attention to marginal zones and questions hierarchies of various types.
Weinberger, who saw himself as a field worker, embarked in the 1970s on ethno-poetic works that formed the basis for his decades of artistic investigations of natural and man-made spaces.

Ruderal plants – “Weeds” – involved in all areas of life, are initial and orientation point for notes, drawings, photographs, objects, texts, films as well as big projects in public space.

In 1991-92 he designed the WILD CUBE, a rib steel enclosure for spontaneous vegetation to grow without human intervention – a RUDERAL SOCIETY that creates a gap in the urban environment. At the same time, Weinberger began a series of subversive plant transfers to urban and rural plots appropriated for this purpose.

In BURNING and WALKING he opened up the asphalt on the forecourt of Szene Salzburg during the 1993 festival summer and left this enclosed 8 x 8 m area to itself. This work was reinstalled in 1997 on the Kulturbahnhof car park at documenta X and again in 1998 in the City of Tokyo.

At documenta X Weinberger also planted neophytes from southern and south-eastern Europe on a 100 m strech of railroad track, which became an internationally acclaimed metaphor for modern-day migration processes and with its poetic and political references furthermore. Since 2015 his work is getting renewed and will stay there in Kassel.
2009 he was invited for the Austrian Pavillon at the Venice Biennial and in 2017 to documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel.
With his work he contributed significantly to the recent discussion on art and nature since the early 1990’s.

Susanne Witzgall in (re)designing nature, Hatje Cantz 2011
“… Lois Weinberger’s gardens, where plants and soil are essentially left to themselves, and weeds gain a new significance, where the greenery migrates and neophytes have free access, seem to be visionary. They are radical precedents and a paradigmatic example of new strategies for dealing with nature …“.

Lois Weinberger in Anna Moszynska’s SCULPTURE NOW (World of Art), Thames & Hudson 2013
“… Sculpture now surveys the dynamic developments in sculptural practice worldwide since the mid-1990s, outlining major trends and identifying the groundbreaking artists who are forging new paths and setting the contemporary agenda …“.