BIO

Austin Settle is an American visual artist working with photographic materials. He physically manipulates analog color transparencies through carving and burning, creating works that blur photography, painting, and sculpture. Settle holds a BA in Art History from UC Santa Barbara (2002). Recent exhibitions include Past:Present at Frei.Haus, Vienna and Establishing Connection at Vienna Art Week. His site-specific commissions include installations for Diesel Flagship Store and Hotel Lamee. Settle’s work is held in collections including BP, Deloitte Austria, and Diesel (EU). Settle lives and works in Vienna, Austria.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My practice investigates the archaeology of light.

My practice is rooted in photo-based painting and sculpture. I work with color positive film transparencies—both material I shoot myself and found family slides. Color positive film is comprised of three emulsion layers. I sculpt and paint with these layers directly on the film itself—carving, burning, chemically altering to reveal latent potential while leaving traces of history as echoes of the past.

I am painting on the film with the film. The inherent photographic emulsion becomes my medium. Each intervention is irreversible.

The resulting works range from intimate installations with slide viewers to wall-filling light pieces, framed C-Prints and unique sculptural objects. The work oscillates between pure abstraction—dominated by vivid color and haptic textures akin to the folds and pleats of fabric—and fragments of photographic content transformed beyond recognition.

Inspired by physics and fractality, my practice explores the oscillation between the micro and the macro. Microscopic emulsion interventions reveal hidden information that only becomes visible at monumental scale—discoveries that emerge through the work itself, transforming both material and maker.

The discarded slides represent quiet verdicts on whose history was worth keeping. My interventions operate at that exact point—between preservation and loss. My current investigations include synthesizing analog and digital, translating these film-based interventions into navigable VR environments, underscoring photography's intrinsic temporal nature by adding the fourth dimension of time—viewers move through the material's layered history as immersive spatial experience.

CV

EDUCATION

2002 BA in Art History, UC Santa Barbara

Self-taught photographer and video artist

EXHIBITIONS (Selection)

2025

  • Past:Present, curated by Esther Hladik, Vienna, Austria (Solo)

  • Establishing Connection, Vienna Art Week, Vienna, Austria (Group)

2020

  • Light in Boxes / TV Signal, Open Studio Show, Vienna, Austria

  • Hotel Leo Grand, Vienna, Austria (Group)

2019

  • Take Festival for Independent Fashion and Art, Vienna, Austria (Group)

  • Parallel Art Fair, Flying Gallery, Vienna, Austria (Group)

  • In/Studio, Atelier Bauernmarkt 9, Vienna, Austria (Solo)

2016

  • One Day Show / STUDIOS, Lenikus Collection, Vienna, Austria (Solo)

2015

  • Liquid Forms, STUDIOS, Lenikus Collection, Vienna, Austria (Solo)

2014

  • Pop-up Studio, Residency at Lenikus Collection, Vienna, Austria

  • Open Studio, Vienna, Austria

2013

  • Projection Art, Site Specific Installation, Hotel Lamee, Vienna, Austria

2012

  • ART SUITE, Vienna, Austria (Group)

  • Lisabirds Art Collective, Artpark Villabulfon, Klagenfurt, Austria (Group)

  • Site Specific Installation, Flagship Diesel Store, Vienna, Austria (Solo)

2011

  • Young Art Auction, Vienna, Austria (Group)

  • The Flow Art Alliance, Vienna, Austria (Group)

  • Art Hotel Elisabeth Group Show, Ischgl, Austria (Group)

  • Art Salon Vienna, Vienna, Austria (Group)

COLLECTIONS (Selection)

  • BP Austria

  • Lenikus Collection

  • Deloitte Austria

  • Diesel (EU)