Sarah Pichlkostner

Sarah Pichlkostner (1988, St. Johann im Pongau, Austria) lives and works in East Sussex. Pichlkostner creates sculptures and environments that investigate invisible processes: the transmission of energy, the passage of time, and our psychological responses to materials and things. Her room-scale installations, which she describes as "settings," are derived from personal and practical research into the haptic materiality of objects. Ready-made components are dismantled and reassembled; the materials used are inexpensive and designed for use, the kind of DIY products found in any department store or warehouse: panes and lamps, fabric, aluminium tubes, safety straps, sandbags, gym mats. A layer of human voice, always the artist's own, shifts the work from the visual into a more tactile, less cognitive register.

In recent work, Pichlkostner has extended this investigation toward ecological questions — working with discarded materials she describes as "socio-ecological residues," things that have lost their original function and begun to integrate back into the systems around them. The work asks at what point individual action becomes shared ecological responsibility.

Pichlkostner studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna (2008–2013), and completed residencies at de Ateliers, Amsterdam (2014–2016) and the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP), New York (2019). In 2023 she received the Austrian State Scholarship for Fine Arts.

Solo exhibitions include Fill O, David Dale Gallery, Glasgow (2022); Inundate, Galerie Hubert Winter, Vienna (2022); I'd ride on a rock and go take a bite / if moon was a cookie, Josh Lilley, London (2019); If the Moon was a Cookie, P////AKT, Amsterdam (2018); KUY "I Wanna Know What Will Happen Tomorrow?" KAY, Was Still Walking, Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2018); KUY calls KAY: "oh darling, we flying to the moon we need to save weight", Galerie Hubert Winter, Vienna (2017); Kay calls me all the time in other words fly me to the moon, Josh Lilley Gallery, London (2017); It can talk in any language in 348.400 kilometers, Ketelfactory, Schiedam (2017); Blue Muller and Black Smith, de Ateliers, Amsterdam (2016); M: I have two rooms; L: I have seen from different windows, Bakery, Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2015); and Powernapping 2015, 21er Haus, Vienna (2015).

Group exhibitions include HERE COMES LOVE, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin (2023); Time Takes a Cigarette, Josh Lilley, London (2023); Stil (Silent), Ketelfactory, Amsterdam (2019); Stains on a Decade, Josh Lilley Gallery, London (2019); Duo Show, Arnulf Rainer Museum, Baden (2018); Hybrids, Lustwarande, Tilburg (2018); On the Nature of Things, Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2017); and Sparkling like the Surface of the Ocean at Night, De Garage, Rotterdam (2017).

Her work is held in the collections of the Belvedere, Vienna; Musa, Vienna; Collection Lenikus, Vienna; and ABN Amro, Amsterdam.