Rainer Ganahl

From 1986 until 1991, Rainer Ganahl studied at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Peter Weibel) and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Nam June Paik). He was a member of the 1990/91 Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York. His best known work, “S/L (Seminars/ Lectures)”, is an ongoing series of photographs, begun in 1995, of well-known cultural critics addressing audiences. The photographs, taken in university classrooms and lecture halls, not only show the lecturer but also the listeners and students in the audience. In a similar way, he documented his own process of learning an “exotic” language (e.g., Basic Japanese) as an art project. In his “Imported-Reading Seminars” held from 1995 onward, the group-study of theoretical works from specific countries were documented on video. His latest exhibition El Mundo was recently listed as one of the top exhibitions of 2014 by The New York Times. Rainer Ganahl represented Austria at the 1999 Venice Biennale.