Wolfgang Staehle

Wolfgang Staehle is an early pioneer of net.art in the United States, known for his video streaming of the collapse of the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001.

Education

Wolfgang Staehle was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1950 and gained his first set of studies at the Freie Kunstschule in Stuttgart, Germany. In 1976, he moved to New York and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the School of Visual Arts.

Life and Work

After getting his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, he worked as a video artist, and in 1991, he founded [http://www.thing.net/ The Thing] . The Thing was an Internet forum for new media art. It started out as an independent media project that began as a bulletin board system (BBS) that later became an online forum for artists and cultural theorists to exchange ideas. By the late 1990s, The Thing grew into a successful online community and began hosting artists' websites. It also includes a mailing list and was the first Website devoted to net.art, bbs.thing.net. [cite web |url=http://www.wolfgangstaehle.info/pages.php?content=resume.php&navGallID=Resume|title=Staehle's Resume|accessdate=2008-04-28]

In 1996, he started his series of live online video streams. His first series is called Empire 24/7 where he documented the Empire State Building in New York City. He documented it by setting up a digital still camera at The Thing’s office located in New York’s West Chelsea neighborhood. Every four seconds, the camera took a picture of the building and the images were sent and projected in a gallery at the ZKM Center for Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe, Germany. This project was a reference to Andy Warhol’s 1964 film called the Empire. Empire (1964 film) was a silent, eight-hour-long black and white film in which the camera focus on the Empire State Building from dusk until dawn. Staehle have continue working on his series of live online video streams of other buildings, landscapes and cityscapes such as the Fernsehturm in Berlin, the Comburg Monastery in Germany, and a Yanomami village in the Brazilian rainforest. Staehle currently serves as the Executive Director of The Thing and is represented by the Postmasters Gallery in New York. [citebook|title=New Media Art|Last=Tribe|First=Mark|Coauthors=Jana,Reena|Year=2007|url=https://wiki.brown.edu/confluence/display/MarkTribe/Wolfgang+Staehle|Publisher=Taschen|Location=Germany|isbn=9783822830413|pages=90]

Notable projects

* "Empire 24/7" (1999-2004)
* "Untitled" (2001)
* "Fernsehturm" (2001-Present)
* "Comburg" (2001-Present)
* "Yano a" (2002)

Exhibitions

Solo Exhibitions

1987
* Daniel Newburg Gallery, New York1988
* T'Venster Museum, Rotterdam, Netherlands
* "Requiem," The New Museum, New York
* Daniel Newburg Gallery, New York1989
* Galerie Sylvana Lorenz, Paris, France
* The Kitchen, New York
* Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT1990
* Marimura Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
* Galleri Wallner, Malmo, Sweden
* Galerie Wilma Tolksdorf, Hamburg, Germany
* Museum Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany
* Kunsthalle Bremen, Bremen, Germany
* Daniel Buchholz Gallery, Cologne, Germany
* Koury Wingate Gallery, New York1991
* Massimo De Carlo Gallery, Milan, Italy1993
* "Point de Mire," Centre Pompidou, Paris, France1996
* "Installations Video," Art & Public, Geneva, Switzerland2000
* Kunstverein Schwaebisch Hall, Germany2001
* Postmasters Gallery, New York City2004
* Postmasters Gallery, New York City

Group Exhibitions

2001
* "Tele [Visions] "
* "Media Connection"2002
* "Unknown Quantity," Foundation Cartier pour L'Art Contemporian, Paris
* "Monitor 2," Gagosian Chelsea, New York
* "EMPIRE/STATE," Whitney Museum of American Art, Independent Study Program Exhibition at the Art Gallery of The Graduate Center, The City University of New York
* "Outside the Box, " University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, Florida
* "Transmediale.02 2003
* "Yanomami," Foundation Cartier pour L'Art Contemporain, Paris
* "Critical Conditions," Wood Street Galleries, Pittsburgh, PA
* "Slowness," Dorsky Curational Projects, Queens, NY2004
* "Times Zones," Tate Modern, London
* "Midtown," real-time public video projection, Lumen, Leeds, Great Britain
* "The Passage of Mirage," Chelsea Art Museum, New York2005
* "The Forest," Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, NC
* "re:site motereal," Oboro, Montreal
* "Vom Verschwinden," HMKV, Phoenix Halle, Dortmund
* "Photography's Expanded Field," Preus Museum, Horten, Norway
* "Video Sculpture in Germany," Apeejay Media Gallery, New Delhi2006
* "Slow Life," John Hansard Gallery, Southhampton, Great Britain
* "Dark Places," Santa Monica Museum of Art2007
* "Closed Circuit: Video and New Media at the Metropolitan," The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

References

External links

* [http://www.wolfgangstaehle.info/ Staehle’s website]