Tobias Rehberger

Tobias Rehberger: experimentation that focuses on perception and cognitive processes

Tobias Rehberger’s practise often involves objects, like furniture, a kitchen or a lampshade while remaining completely within the territory of art. His reference system is art which he defines as “a way of looking at and approaching something”. The objects often found in his work have a function that, contrary to design where the function is a physical property of the object, actually serves a purpose of opening up a critical entrance into artistic questions or problems. He began working in the early 1990s. The central theme of his work is transformation and his field of experimentation focuses on perception and cognitive processes, on temporality and the sense of transience, on discontinuity and ambiguity, on mutation and the relationships existing between objects and surrounding reality. Tobias Rehberger considers his work as sculpture, approaching his practise from a sculptural point of view and tackling key questions that arise from sculpture, like color and pattern. Even when painting, he employs the strategies of this medium. Pattern and color are deeply considered in his approach and Rehberger considers the effect of these two elements a more fundamental question than defining the media of the work.