Andreas Slominski was born in Meppen, Germany, in 1959. He attended the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg from 1983 to 1986. Since 1984, when he was struck by the sculptural quality of a trap for voles, he has become known for complex variations on the animal trap as sculpture, as well as a variety of conceptual projects that probe ideas about art and its reception. In 1991, he purportedly concealed a severed human hand in a wall of the Kabinett für Aktuelle Kunst in Bremerhaven, Germany, leaving only an empty white gallery. For a 1993 show at the Frankfurt Museum für Moderne Kunst, the artist displayed a bicycle laden with bulging plastic bags against a gallery wall, as though a passerby had left it there. For his 1995 show at the Museum Haus Esters in Krefeld, Germany, he had a golfer hit a ball into the museum from a nearby building. At his extensive 1998 solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Zürich, Slominski executed Self-portrait with Sombrero, in which he drilled two holes high on a gallery wall and photographed himself wearing an altered sombrero (to fit the cramped space) by sticking his hand through one hole and his face in front of the other. In a recent solo show at the Fondazione Prada in Milan, he presented Please Call Me (2003), in which a hidden cell phone could be called and discovered by viewers.

Slominski has had solo exhibitions at the Hamburger Kunsthalle (1995 and 1997) and Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin (1999), among other venues. He has also shown widely in international group exhibitions, such as the Venice Biennale (1988), Skulptur. Projekte in Münster (1997), Manifesta 2 in Luxembourg (1998), Berlin Biennale (1998), and Biennale de Montréal (2000). In 2004, he received the Kunstpreis Aachen. He lives and works in Hamburg.