Alexander Birchler (Swiss, born in Baden, Switzerland 1962) grew up in Switzerland and attended the Academy of Art and Design Basel and the University of Art and Design, Helsinki, Finland, where he earned an MA in Art Education. He went on to study at the the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Canada, where he earned his MFA in 1992. In 2017, Birchler and his long-term collaborator, Teresa Hubbard, were each awarded an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts by the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University in recognition of their outstanding international achievements to art and culture. Birchler lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Austin, TX. Interweaving hybrid forms of storytelling using the medium of photography, film and sculpture, Hubbard / Birchler’s work explores the ways film’s past-tense fictions permeate real geographies in the present.
In 2017 Hubbard / Birchler represented Switzerland in the Swiss Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennial in the exhibition curated by Philipp Kaiser, “Women of Venice.” Hubbard / Birchler’s work is held in numerous public and private collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles; Goetz Collection, Munich; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Washington D.C.; Kunsthaus Zurich; Kunstmuseum Basel; National Museum of Art, Osaka; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Museum of Fine Arts Houston; Yokohama Museum of Art and the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich.
Their extensive international exhibition history includes the 48th and 57th Venice Biennial; the Tate Museum Liverpool; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin; Reina Sofia Museum Madrid; Kunsthaus Graz; Mori Museum Tokyo; Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin; National Gallery Prague and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. Their exhibitions are regularly reviewed in the New York Times; ArtForum International; Art in America; Frieze and Parkett. Their work has been prominently featured in the PBS series, Art 21 — Art in the 21st Century, an educational archive which is broadcast in over 50 countries. Hubbard / Birchler are represented by Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin and Galerie Vera Munro, Hamburg.