Born in Bruneck/Brunico, Wolfgang Zingerle began his education in Gröden/Val Gardena, going on to study in Vienna from 1993 to 1997 and later at Berlin University of the Arts. He graduated in 2000 with a paper on Art Informel at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna. From 2001 to 2006 he taught in the art college at the Humanist grammar school in Bruneck. Today, Zingerle is a freelance artist who divides his time between Percha/Perca (in the province of Bozen/Bolzano) and Venice. His oeuvre is broad, ranging across painting, glass art, graffiti, sculpture, statuary art, land art installations, art in architecture, conceptual and media art, and art within the context of social projects.

In 2008, in collaboration with Manifesta 7, Zingerle created the biggest land art project in the Alps: “Gold Target”. The project centred on the recovery of an old railway pillar belonging to the former Imperial Railways, which traversed the Puster Valley and played its part in several important chapters of European history. When a new railway line was opened in 1975, the supporting pillar became an unused granite monolith. Wolfgang Zingerle, however, transformed it into a golden icon, thus fulfilling one of art’s most important mandates: to liberate debris from the past and give it new meaning.