Michael Günzburger
Born in 1974.
Michael Günzburger is distinguished by a practice centred on drawing, yet conceived in continuity with shared and artisanal modes of production; his doctoral project explicitly draws on three axes—sharing, contesting, and advancing the field—which illuminates the sustained connection between his drawn work and collaborative practices.
His artistic trajectory includes a lengthy autodidactic phase, interrupted in 2013 by the completion of an MFA, a date marking a stage of formalised training. He subsequently undertook a doctoral project, completed in November 2023, under the supervision of Florian Dombois (ZHdK). Over the course of his career, he has also received several private and public residencies and grants, though no exhaustive list of these is provided here.
In terms of his approach, drawing constitutes the formal core of his work, yet it frequently unfolds through collaboration with a range of trades and disciplines: miniature painters, master printers, ethnologists, and even researchers in virology are among the documented collaborators. The doctoral project specifies that these collaborations primarily serve forms of “sharing”—notably collective production and work on modes of presentation—and that they are articulated with the other pillars of contesting and advancing the field. This attention to forms and forms of know-how is also evident in his publications, which include “Contact” (Edition Patrick Frey) and “Fachstelle” (Edition Taube).
His work has been shown in selected exhibitions, notably at Kunsthaus Zürich in 2019, at Human Resources (Los Angeles) in 2017, and at Christinger de Mayo (Zürich) in 2015. Works are held in private and public collections, with a presence noted at the Swiss National Library (Swiss National Library). A professional point of reference is provided by the website www.guenz.ch.
In sum, Günzburger’s practice may be understood as an articulation between a drawn gesture and a collaborative, artisanal working method: drawing produces forms that collective research and technical expertise help to transform and present differently, in accordance with the axes formulated in his doctoral project. His regular publications, participation in residencies, and presence in public and private collections attest to sustained activity, documented through the elements cited.
