Pia Scharler & Craig Dillon

Pia Moana Scharler & Craig Dillon

The Austrian Federal Forests (ÖBf), which are celebrating their 100th anniversary this year, prove with this series of images, created for the calendar WALD-Kalender 2024: the forest is the greatest artist. To prove their point, Pia Scharler, as creative director, and Craig Dillon, as photographer, recreated twelve of the greatest works of art history using natural materials.

To make this homage to biodiversity a reality, employees of the Austrian Federal Forests spent a whole year collecting natural materials in the forests of Austria. With painstaking attention to detail, she used these materials to recreate a series of artworks. Among them are Klimt’s Kiss and The Wanderer by Caspar David Friedrich. 

Pia Scharler studied industrial design and graphic design at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and at Tongji University in Shanghai. She is a designer and artistic researcher. She works in the fields of art direction and visual storytelling, developing exhibition concepts and objects. Her design is based on sensual approaches. She is a university assistant at the University of Applied Arts. She has exhibited at the European Cultural Center Venice and the Künstlerhaus Factory. She is a 2024 Arte Laguna prizewinner.

Craig Dillon was born in Sunderland, England, and has been living in Austria since 1997. As a photographer, he creates gravity-defying, magical still life and food images. He teaches at the Graphische in Vienna, which, founded in 1888, is the oldest school in the world for visual communication and media technology.