KLAUS GUINGAND

Klaus Guingand is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in a critical and conceptual reflection on the contemporary world. Early on, encouraged by the American art dealer Leo Castelli and supported by the international art critic Pierre Restany two major figures in twentieth-century art history he developed a singular body of work, freed from traditional aesthetic conventions.

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His work draws upon a wide range of techniques and media painting, sculpture, installation, photography, video, and writing guided by a constant drive for inquiry, critique, and the pursuit of truth. His oeuvre explores universal and timeless themes such as time, God, truth, humanity, reality, power, death, our fears, and the very nature of art.

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Klaus Guingand is particularly known for the work “Shadows” (1987-1997), a large-scale project involving the participation of 200 international celebrities who posed for him. In 1995, following his exhibition at the Louvre in Paris, he donated one hundred works to benefit an association. In 2012, he completed this project with the participation of twenty international artists, including Jasper Johns, Yayoi Kusama, Brice Marden, Erwin Wurm, Pierre Soulages, Wim Delvoye, Miquel Barceló, Dennis Oppenheim, Jan Fabre, Bernar Venet, Pierre Alechinsky, and Fabrice Hyber.

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Among his other major works are “In God We Trust", “Mafiart", “Rich Artists Poor Art"  and “Art Warning the World" the latter conceived as the first truly global artwork in art history, both in its ambition and in its conceptual and participatory scope.

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Taken as a whole, Klaus Guingand’s work forms a dense and committed corpus in which art becomes a tool for existential and societal questioning. The artist himself describes his creations as “Food for the human soul,” thereby emphasizing the spiritual and reflective dimension of his practice.