Alfons Schilling

Alfons Schilling was born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1934. From 1956 to 1959, he studied at the Akademie für angewandte Kunst (Vienna, Austria). While there, he worked closely with members of the Viennese Actionism movement (primarily Günter Brus). In 1962, Schilling moved to New York, where he lived until 1986. While his work of the 1960s was first and foremost an exploration of optical phenomena through installations, photography and painting, he also made a number of films between 1965 and 1977. Since 1990, he has been a visiting professor at the Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna.

Schilling’s film oeuvre is manageable and, with just four autonomous works totalling 43 minutes, quite slender. And yet, his investigation of the medium of film spans a period of three decades. Apart from his own film works, between 1962 and 1991 there were collaborations with his brother, a visual-reflective performance documentation, and private films and studies, some together with friends. In this medium are to be found the latent questions he addresses in his other works. He also took on several camera and editing engagements for friends in the US avant-garde scene and on contract. The spectrum is broad and impressive, documenting his ongoing interest in moving pictures, including projectable ones.