Ernst Caramelle

Ernst Caramelle was born in Hall in Tirol, Austria, in 1952. From 1970 to 1976, he studied at the University (then College) of Applied Arts in Vienna, under Oswald Oberhuber, among others. In 1974, he was a research fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States. From 1981 to 1983, he taught at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, and from 1986 to 1990 at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Beginning in 1994, he served as a professor at the Karlsruhe Academy of Fine Arts, and from 2012 to 2018 as its rector.
Ernst Caramelle participated in numerous international group exhibitions, including Documenta IX in Kassel in 1992. Solo exhibitions dedicated to the artist were held, among others, at the Kunsthalle Basel (1982), the Kunsthalle Bern (1986), the Musée Départemental de Rochechouart (1989), the Museum Haus Lange in Krefeld, the Nationalgalerie in Berlin (both 1990), the Vienna Secession (1990), the Portikus in Frankfurt am Main (1990), the BAWAG Foundation in Vienna (2002), the Museu Serralves in Porto (2005), the Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe (2006), the Galerie im Taxispalais in Innsbruck (2008), the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus (2012), the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht (2016), and the mumok – Museum of Modern Art, Ludwig Foundation, Vienna. 2018, the ACF-Austrian Cultural Forum, New York, USA (2025).
In 2001, he was awarded the Tyrolean State Prize for Art, and in 2022, he received the Klocker Foundation’s Grand Art Prize. Ernst Caramelle lives and works in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and New York, USA.

“Ideas. Ernst Caramelle” has been displayed above a storefront in downtown Vienna since an exhibition held as part of “Art in Public Spaces” in 1988. It is an idea, a pure product of the imagination, because no actual storefront for ideas exists. The imaginary installation reflects Caramelle’s conceptual approach, in which the idea is regarded as equal to the physical artwork—whether realized or not. On the occasion of the “4th International Painting Weeks” in Graz in 1974, the artist began working with video at an early stage. In his characteristic ironic and critical manner, he staged a series of video performances and produced a series of photographs titled “Video Landscapes.” That same year, the artist deepened his exploration of what were then new media and their influence on our perception of reality as a “Research Fellow” at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT in Cambridge (USA). There he created his installation “Video Ping-Pong” (1974), an icon of early video art that examines reality and media reality and is part of the Generali Foundation Collection.
Throughout his artistic practice, Caramelle consistently focuses on questioning reality. The difficulty of answering the question “What is reality?” is reflected in his works through a shift from unambiguity toward ambiguity. In 1979, he published “Forty Found Fakes” in New York, a collection of newspaper clippings that he presented as reproductions of works by renowned artists. The artist explores the boundaries between truth and deception, reality and illusion, in order to challenge our perception of reality. For Caramelle, the deliberate selection of media is essential, as he uses them in conscious reflection on their varying conditions. Drawing, photography, video, as well as the production of printed materials, exhibition catalogs, and artist books are all equally valued works for the artist. Over the years, Caramelle has developed a broad spectrum of subtle variations on his own designs, which he repeatedly revisits, copies, and yet slightly alters, so that we can see and think more clearly about what appears to be the same.
Since the 1980s, the artist has also devoted himself to mural painting, for example, on the occasion of his participation in Documenta IX in Kassel in 1992. Another group of works consists of his “Gesso Pieces”: works on paper that he creates using watercolor, ink, or acrylic paint on supports prepared with a chalk base (gesso), some of which he subsequently washes away. Caramelle himself refers to these as “quasi-paintings” and, through these works, challenges our perception of the original and spatial illusion. (Doris Leutgeb)