Werner Kaligofsky was born in Wörgl in 1957 and grew up in Kitzbühel in Tyrol. He dropped out of secondary school at the age of 16 in favor of studying at the Graphische Bundes Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt in Vienna, which he completed in 1977. He subsequently studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (1978 to 1984) before embarking on a career as independent artist. Kaligofsky is one of the co-founders of REM, one of the first artists-run off spaces in Vienna. He has received numerous scholarships, including one the federal government’s artist’s studios (1990 to 1996), the State Scholarship for Fine Arts (1992) and the State Scholarship for Artistic Photography (1999). He has been a member of the Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession, since 2006. Kaligofsky lived and worked for several years in New York (2010 to 2013), in Salzburg, and has been back in Vienna since 2017.

Werner Kaligofsky, who originally trained in painting at the academy, initially concentrated on drawing, a medium with which he explored the morphology of the body or sound in film-like sequences. Organic forms brought into kinetic vibrations can also be found in his monochrome, minimal wall objects made of aluminum and paper, which he also developed at the end of the 1980s. During this time, he also created a series of art objects with sound-generating objects, such as guitars, records and record players, which he manipulated, deconstructed or integrated into his own objects. At the beginning of the 1990s, Kaligofsky began intensively to study the structural content of cinema films and their representation on television, which led to numerous serial photographic works. 

From 1991 to 1998, he accompanied the demolition of the former Habig hat factory and the construction of the museum building of the Generali Foundation in Vienna in a photographic project entitled Die Arbeit verschwindet im Produkt (Labor Disappears in the Product). During this time, in addition to his independent artistic work, Kaligofsky began to focus intensively on architectural and exhibition photography. On the occasion of his major solo exhibition at the Galerie im Taxispalais in Innsbruck, Tyrol, he addressed political themes for the first time in Trafficways 1 (2001) by projecting streets named after opponents and victims of National Socialism into the gallery space. The repressed history of places continued to occupy him in the following years, when he had the names of former residents (Trafficways 2, 2002) or border towns (Drosendorf–Jemnice, 2003) inscribed on public space. For the Liverpool Biennial 2004, he reversed the principle and took on the role of a guest who was guided through the city’s history by a Newly Arrived and a Departed Returned. In his project Levittown (2012), he explored the history and adaptation of the different types of houses by their residents in one of the first mass-produced settlements in Pennsylvania in the USA.

Werner Kaligofsky has shown his work in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Austria and abroad. His books include Ad Kaligofsky (Vienna, 1991), Die Arbeit verschwindet im Produkt (Vienna/Cologne, 1998), Verkehrsflächen/Trafficways (Innsbruck/Salzburg, 2004) and, as part of the artist book series ÖsterreichBilder, his volume 47°26’47.70”N  12°23’27.28”E (Salzburg, 2017). His works can be found in the collection of the Generali Foundation, the City of Vienna, the photo collection of the Austrian Federal Government, the Tyrolean State Museum Ferdinandeum, the collection of the Lower Austrian State Museum, several private collections and many more.