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Herwig              
Scherabon







Media
Artist








Herwig Scherabon is an award-winning visual artist, who is currently based in Berlin. He creates immersive audio-visual installations that explore themes of object oriented ontology, post-humanism, nature, ecology, and technology, as well as the agency and sentience of non-human beings. His art invites viewers to consider their place in the world and the role that technology plays in shaping our experiences.

Herwig’s background in graphic design and architecture has influenced his art in significant ways. His interest in the abstract interpretation of space, places, and objects, as well as his use of cartographic data and 3D scans as raw material, adds a unique layer to his work. By questioning ideas of reality and evidence and blurring the lines between the virtual and the real, Herwig’s art invites viewers to consider the ontological complexities of digital and physical realities.

In his work he often blurs the lines between the organic and the digital, inviting us to reconsider our relationship with the world around us. Utilizing a range of media, including digital art, CGI, and mixed reality, Herwig creates thought-provoking and otherworldly environments that challenge our preconceived notions about the world. Having grown up in the Austrian Alps, he has a long lasting relationship with landscapes and nature and is interested in the sublime qualities of large scale phenomena. This often manifests in his work through the use of meditative and immersive concepts.

Herwig Scherabon's art encourages viewers to consider the experiences and perspectives of beings other than ourselves. This can be a powerful way to challenge our own assumptions and biases, and to open ourselves up to new ways of thinking about the world. By inviting viewers to reconsider their place in the world in relation to non-human beings, Herwig’s art invites us to reflect on our own place in the larger ecosystem and to consider the impact that our actions have on the world around us. This kind of introspection and self-reflection can be transformative and can help us to better understand our place in the world and our relationship to other beings.

Recently Herwig has had exhibitions in Berlin, Paris, New York City and Seoul. If you are interested to collaborate do not hesitate to get in touch.
Mark













Opium Or The Mesmerizing Beauty Of Being Half Awake, 2019
Print:
New Ecology and Art – Anthropocene as “dithering time”, 以文社, May 2022
Entkunstung III, January 2020
Vangardist Magazine #15, Robotic Love Edition, November 2019
GEO, issue 01/2017, Gruner + Jahr, January 2017
Computer Arts Magazine, issue 261, Future plc, January 2017
El País Semanal, El País, January 2017
The Scotsman, Johnston Press, September 2016

Exhibitions (Selection)

09/2023 —ARS Electronica, Linz, Austria
11/2022 —Art Basel, Miami, USA
11/2022 —Palais de Tokyo, Website, FR
10/2022 —Karachi Biennale, Karachi, PK
12/2021 —Thailand Biennale, Korat, TH
07/2021 —Kiezkapelle, Solo Show, Berlin, GER
01/2021 —The 5th Floor, Tokyo, JP
02/2020 —Bethanien Creative Quarter, Berlin, GER
07/2020 —Galerie Freihausgasse, Villach, AUT
01/2020—Kunstraum LLLLLL, Vienna, AUT
11/2019 — thescreenisnotthelimit, Online Biennale
11/2019 — S/O, Vienna, AUT
11/2019 — Museum Of The City Of NY, NYC, USA
10/2019 — Seoul Future Conf., Seoul, KR
07/2019 — Millepiani, Rome, IT
06/2019 – Espace EDF BAZACLE, Toulouse, FR
06/2019 — ISEA, Gwangju, KR
06/2019 — Spring Festival, Graz, AUT
05/2019 — Take Festival, Vienna, AUT
05/2019 – Artivive “Walkie Talkie”, Vienna, AUT
03/2019 – Diagonale Graz, AUT
02/2019 — Austrian Cultural Forum, Berlin, DE
01/2019 – Improper Walls Vienna, AUT
05/2018 – Fondation EDF Paris, FR 09/2017 – Pratt Manhattan Gallery, USA
08/2016 – Glasgow School of Art, UK
12/2017 – Biotop, AUT
Awards & Residencies

05/2021 – ADC Award
08/2019 – LABVERDE Art Residency, Amazon, Brasil
05/2017 – European Design Award
11/2016 – Information is Beautiful Award
07/2016 – Print Futures Award


Teaching & Research

10/2022 – ongoing –  Professorship at University of Applied Science and Art, Digital Media & Experiment,
Bielefeld, GER

03/2022 – Karachi School of Art, Karachi, PK
05/2021 – Bauhaus, Weimar, GE
05/2021 – University of Presov, SK
06/2018 – Bauhaus, Weimar, GE
05/2017 – Universtity of York, York, UK
Not Really Now Not Anymore

Thailand Biennale Korat
Dec 2021 – March 2022
View Video with Sound

Not Really Now Not Anymore premiered at the Thailand Biennale Korat 2021
Mixed media
2-channel audiovisual installation (7:48 min loop)
Enclosed ecosystem with plants and moss (40x40x50 cm); augmented reality animation with sound (2:00 min. loop)

The work is a proposition in multiple realities, offering the viewer a rethinking of cartesian geography and an alternative to the notion of continuously flowing time. Instead what is being offered is a barely recognisable reality, something simultaneously in the uncanny valley between real and not-real. Disruptive events on species level, like pandemics and volcanic eruptions, make the mind reevaluate everything it thought it knew. Not Really Now Not Anymore is the memory of a displaced and distorted reality in digital space — it is the experience of change flattened into video format.

Using different terrain and object scanning techniques, the artist spent a month on the island of La Palma in the Atlantic Ocean to record and document its landscape, ecosystem, and its fragile, volcano-riddled geography. The material, spanning 3D scans, sound-recordings and drone footage, was turned into a 2-channel audiovisual installation which holds all of the material essence of the place, its rocks, water and plants as holographic projections. This record was taken only months before the island was shattered by a series of volcanic eruptions.

In the center of the installation is a terrarium and its extension into augmented reality.* The terrarium symbolises the object-like quality that humanity tends to attribute to all things nature-related. An enclosed form of otherness far away from human cognition and responsibility. The augmented reality (viewable on visitors phones) is a way to animate this otherness and bring it to life.

In both pieces the question of evidence somehow naturally arises. What constitutes something as real and alive? Ultimately this also raises the question: how do we construct reality? How can we realize what is already real and right in front of us? How can we bear witness to ongoing ecological collapse? How can we provide evidence for species and ecosystems before they disappear? And more importantly: how can we adjust and create alternate utopias that involve the landscapes and plant life around us? Can the digital evidence we gather of still-living species help us build a sanctuary for them?

* This part of the installation is an independent artwork called “A Strangling Fruit, A Radiant Vortex – Evanescent Flashes From The Luminous Other” (2021). The 2-channel audiovisual part is called “Memories of Change”. Both artworks combined constitute the ensemble of Not Really Now Not Anymore.


Funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Arts and Culture, Civil Service and Sport AR App by Refrakt
Human Voice by Erik Laidal

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