SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Exit Art
NEW YORK
Green/Photo Documentation, 2008
The show investigates the historical, environmental and psychological readings of GREEN.

9th International Biennial of Miniature Art
GORNJI MILANOVAC, SERBIA, 2008
Walter Kratner`s pair of shoes Handicap with the minimum interference of the artist from a glamurous design of the object, it gets a totally different meaning, bringing up a host of current social and political topics.
-- Mirjana Selakov (Art historian, Kunsthaus Graz)

Exploratorium
helpless/Installation, 2002
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
In this installation, three hair dryers blow air into 19th-century lead church organ pipes, creating a helpless sound. The piece sonically expresses the impossibility of communicating with history.

The Projects Room
Site Specific Installation, May 2000
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
Working in The Projects Room from a limited selection of usual materials -- ropes, sickles and broken chairs, among other objects, -- Kratner arranged and rearranged in new installations on a weekly (and even more frequent) basis. Within the architectural limitations of this particular space, powerful metaphors for conflict and suffering were created.

Refusalon
Dear Austria/Installation with Walter Kratner/Roman Signer
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, April 2000
In response to the delicate situation in Austria, Kratner isolated a single object a shovel, one Nazi and one not. The shovels symbolized the European past in the present, including war and trenches. Signer, who represented Switzerland at the Venice Biennale in 1999, presented a video of his Venice installation, suggesting bombardment.

Strangers Bread
Hipp-Kunstalle/Gmunden
Site Specific Installation, 1999
SALZBURG, AUSTRIA
Solid plates of iron are perfectly situated in the ancient huge hall of this historical building. The archaic construction of the building, offset by massive fastenings with hemp ropes and sickles, suggests the principles of war, concurrent with the one now raging in Kosovo. The terrible balance between the elemental forces at work in this installation threaten the viewer with a sense that a breakdown can occur at any and every moment.
-- ORF, Austrian Television/Film

Silence
Kunstwoche Jesterburg
HAMBURG, GERMANY
Installation, 1997
The silence in the room created by dozens of broken bottles lying on the dirty burlap bags that once carried coal, is unbearable. A compelling symbol for the transitoriness of our lives.
-- Hamburger Abendzeitung/Hamburg

San Giovanni Degli Almadiani Church
UMBRIA, ITALY
Site Specific Installation, 1994
The anatomical drawings of Walter Kratner, which are suspended and hung as scrolls in unusual ways throughout, are in the best European tradition. His strong and very personal artistic expression grows right out of the studies of Leonardo Da Vinci.
-- Il Messaggero/Rome
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BIOGRAPHY
Born in Graz (Austria), 1954. Mr. Kratner studied art and design at University of Nurenberg for one year. He studied Art, Architecture, Design, History of Art and Visual Language, at University of Florence, Italy, for four years. In addition to his art work, Mr. Kratner is a curator.
As of 2003, he is based in Styria (Austria).