Franz Tišek

Franz Tišek (*1981 in Linz) is an Austrian sculptor and artist. He studied at the Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien (the Academy am Schillerplatz). In 2005, together with the sculptor Markus Hiesleitner, he co-founded the Viennese association and art space Kulturdrogerie, housed in a former chemist’s shop at Gentzgasse 86–88 in Vienna-Währing (the 18th district). Kulturdrogerie works as an artist-run space: it offers studios, production facilities and exhibition and presentation space, and is conceived as an experimental “ideelle Versuchsstation” — a place where artists can realise projects for which support and space are lacking elsewhere. Alongside his artistic work, Tišek farms his own smallholding in Upper Austria, where he regularly withdraws. In the text for an artist talk at the Klangmanifeste festival, his understanding of art is described as “a living spiritual focal point, a place of social awareness, the intersection of the lines of force of the age and its seismograph, a space of freedom and an instrument of human liberation”; his work at Kulturdrogerie is described as a living, unrepeatable social event whose significance goes beyond what it appears to be at first glance.

In the Czech Republic he took part, among other things, as a foreign participant in the Plan B project in Litomyšl (together with Markus Hiesleitner and Jiří Černický).