Thomas Feuerstein (born 1968, Innsbruck) is an Austrian contemporary artist. His works and projects are realized in different media. They include sculptures, installations, environments, objects, drawings, paintings, radio plays as well net art and BioArt. Feuerstein’s work is known for growth and transience, processes of transformation, biological metabolism and entropy.
Feuerstein's work involves digital and biochemical processes and transmutations, with specific materialities playing a central role. Processes and materials are used both as carriers of meaning and narrations and in the form of materials, and ultimately become agents in art. Essential aspects are the interplay of linguistic, visual and molecular-processual elements, the detection of latent links between facts and fictions as well as the entanglement between art and science. Feuerstein developed the artistic method of "conceptual narration" for this purpose. At the border between nature, art and science, Feuerstein's works set in motion pataphysical cycles of the production of meaning and possibilities. The works contain pataphysical references to Alfred Jarry, Raymond Roussel or Marcel Duchamp. In contrast to historical pataphysics, machines, apparatuses and scientific methods are not only attributed metaphorical and symbolic meanings, but used for real processes. Feuerstein speaks of "patachemistry" and "patabiology" in the context of projects involving biological organisms and processes. Examples of this are metabolic processes in which artistic materials are produced, altered or digested in the form of objects and sculptures. References to aspects of entropy in Robert Smithson's work or to Robert Morris' form and anti-form can be found in works with biofilms, slime, fungi, and myxomycetes.