Iris Häussler is best known for her unsettling, immersive installations that revolve around fictitious persona and their artistic legacies. Detailed, historically researched biographies of invented characters build the basis from which she creates the material evidence of their obsessive lives and works.

In collaboration with art-institutions and museums, these hyper-realistic environments are often shown interwoven into the local historic, social, economic and geographic contexts. Visitors to these installations sometimes refer to their experience as “having walked through a novel in three dimensions”.

While Iris exhibits in the traditional setting of the White Cube, visitors  experience her work also in a more dramatic way in off-site spaces. This has a long history: she created her very first site-specific art installation in the womens’ toilets at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 1984. Since then, she exhibited in basements, trailers, garages, apartments, churches, chapels, hotel-rooms, stores, industrial buildings, monasteries  and historic houses. This inclusive approach widens the audience to the community of neighbors and passers-by who might not engage regularly with contemporary art.

Because Häussler is interested in the fragile boundaries between fiction and reality, her installations are sometimes not immediately revealed as contemporary artworks. This sparks controversy and invites discussions about unmarked artworks in external locations as well as in museums.

Born in Germany and trained as a conceptual artist and sculptor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Iris Häussler’s work is shown internationally. She was an awardee of the Kunstfonds, Bonn, and won the Karl Hofer Prize 1999, in Berlin. In 2010 she was invited on the Cape Farewell (UK) High Arctic Expedition. Since her immigration to Canada she has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Chalmers Arts Foundation, the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council. Häussler speaks about her methodology and work internationally in universities and art institutions in Canada, the USA, and Europe. Her work is found in international collections including the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; the Städtische Sammlung im Lenbachhaus, Munich and the Goetz Collection, Munich, Germany and private collections worldwide.
 

 See Studio Views from 1984 to 2020.

See ongoing studio views on Instagram  ​ 

Contact:

iris.haeussler@gmail.com

Representation:

Gallery Daniel Faria

Phone: +1 (416) 538-1880
Email: info@danielfariagallery.com
Address: 188 St Helens Avenue, Toronto ON M6H 4A1, Canada

PSM Gallery

Phone: +49 30 246 492 00
Email: office@psm-gallery.com
Schöneberger Ufer 61 10785 Berlin, Germany

Copyright Agency

Iris Häussler is a member of:
VG Bild-Kunst r.V.

Iris Häussler is a member of CARFAC

The artist volunteers for Flap.org