Michael Sailstorfer

Michael Sailstorfer, a contemporary sculptor based in Berlin, challenges conventional sculptural practice by incorporating sound, movement, and time to reconfigure objects and imbue them with new meanings.  He learned to build things with his hands at his father's stone workshop and his grandfather's farm in Velden. Sailstorfer studied under German sculptor Olaf Metzel at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich from 1999 to 2005, and later obtained his MA Fine Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Some of Sailstorfer's notable artworks include Zeit ist keine Autobahn (2008), a kinetic sculpture that features a wall-mounted tire driven by an electric motor that gradually wears against the wall due to friction, leaving a growing pile of rubber residue on the floor below. Forst (2014), a large-scale installation consisting of five trees suspended upside down from slowly rotating motors, explores the relationship between nature and man-made mechanical systems by interrupting the sterility of the gallery space with the sound, movement, and smell of decaying trees.

Sailstorfer has received numerous awards, including the Artisti per Frescobaldi Prize (2014), Vattenfall Contemporary (2012), Kunstpreis junger westen (2011), and the Dr. Franz und Astrid-Ritter Stiftung Prize (2007). He has exhibited his works in solo and group exhibitions worldwide and his works are held in major public and private collections such as Centre Pompidou in Paris, S.M.A.K. Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art in Ghent, and Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.