Michael Riedel
05 Apr - 31 May 2014
MICHAEL RIEDEL
Laws of Form
5 April - 31 May 2014
David Zwirner is pleased to present Michael Riedel’s first exhibition in the London gallery.
In line with the artist’s method of “record, label, playback”, the works in the exhibition are variations of existing material from Riedel’s own repertoire and beyond. Employing a variety of media and techniques, they share, in the artist’s own words, an “aesthetic interest in the faults of transmission and transference”. Presented on both floors of the gallery, his honeycomb panels and PowerPoint paintings are devised from earlier poster paintings, which themselves were made with ephemera from other projects. These works, in turn, form the basis of text-based wallpaper. The Proposals for Change of Modern are part of a series of banners derived from the logos of selected institutions. Cut out in black fabric, the new logos can be hung in different orientations on the wall and are also used as “stencils” for subsequent works on canvas. Shown here are variations on the logo of The Modern Institute in Glasgow, where Riedel participated in a group exhibition in 2008.
Posters and flyers from Oskar-von-Miller Strasse 16—the art space in Frankfurt which Riedel founded with Dennis Loesch in 2000—are displayed in an extensive configuration on a single wall in the gallery, and include a small photograph depicting people gathered around a table in Andy Warhol’s Factory. Riedel once staged the composition by arranging friends in similar positions at Oskar-von-Miller Strasse 16, and for this exhibition, he has built to measure the original table according to the photograph. The recreation of objects and places has been a long-standing part of his practice, and here extends to include the backdrop to the Pop artist’s table. Yet rather than creating reproductions that could be mistaken for the originals, Riedel’s focus is on the process of the copying act and everything that happens along the way. Part of an overriding system devised by the artist that autonomously and continuously spurs new work, they occupy the distinction between the original and the copy.
Coinciding with the exhibition will be the launch of Oskar, an updated version of an artist book first published in 2003. While the earlier volume documented the first three years of activities at Oskar-von-Miller Strasse 16, this new edition chronicles the ensuing ten years, including various relocations of the venue following the deconstruction of the original building. The design and production of books occupy a stand-alone part of Riedel’s practice, and Oskar is at once a record and a perpetuation of the “record, label, playback” dictum.
The exhibition marks the tenth anniversary of Riedel’s Freitagsküche, a restaurant-type space first opened in 2004 at Oskar-von-Miller Strasse 16 in Frankfurt. A meeting point and “place in social reality”, which serves communal dinners on Friday nights and more recently also lunch from Monday to Friday, Freitagsküche moves to London for the private dinner following the opening night in its first appearance outside of Germany.
Michael Riedel was born in 1972 and currently lives and works in Frankfurt, where he received a Meisterschüler at the Städelschule in 2000. Since joining David Zwirner in 2004, the artist has had four solo exhibitions at the gallery in New York: Neo (2005), Filmed Film (2008), The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog (2011), and PowerPoint (2013).
In 2013, Riedel was invited by the Palais de Tokyo in Paris to create a series of three site-specific installations in the museum’s event space. Currently on view is the first presentation, Jacques comité [Giacometti], for which the artist covered the walls and floor with 4073 “o’s” extracted from the transcript of a recording made during the deinstallation of a Giacometti exhibition at the Hamburger Kunsthalle. The artist’s second installation, titled Dual air [Dürer], opens April 24, 2014, and repurposes materials from a recent Albrecht Dürer show at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt.
Over the past decade, Riedel has shown in both solo and group exhibitions at prominent venues throughout the United States and Europe. In 2012, his work was the subject of a major survey, Kunste zur Text, at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. Other venues which have hosted recent solo exhibitions include the Kunstverein Hamburg (2010); Städel Museum, Frankfurt (2009 and 2008); and the Kunstraum Innsbruck, Austria (2007). The artist has participated in
a number of international group shows, including those organised by the Sprengel Museum Hannover (2012); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2011); Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (GAM), Turin (2010); Tate Modern, London (2009); Kunsthalle Bern (2008 and 2006); Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art, France (2007); Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2005); and the Secession, Vienna (2003).
Laws of Form
5 April - 31 May 2014
David Zwirner is pleased to present Michael Riedel’s first exhibition in the London gallery.
In line with the artist’s method of “record, label, playback”, the works in the exhibition are variations of existing material from Riedel’s own repertoire and beyond. Employing a variety of media and techniques, they share, in the artist’s own words, an “aesthetic interest in the faults of transmission and transference”. Presented on both floors of the gallery, his honeycomb panels and PowerPoint paintings are devised from earlier poster paintings, which themselves were made with ephemera from other projects. These works, in turn, form the basis of text-based wallpaper. The Proposals for Change of Modern are part of a series of banners derived from the logos of selected institutions. Cut out in black fabric, the new logos can be hung in different orientations on the wall and are also used as “stencils” for subsequent works on canvas. Shown here are variations on the logo of The Modern Institute in Glasgow, where Riedel participated in a group exhibition in 2008.
Posters and flyers from Oskar-von-Miller Strasse 16—the art space in Frankfurt which Riedel founded with Dennis Loesch in 2000—are displayed in an extensive configuration on a single wall in the gallery, and include a small photograph depicting people gathered around a table in Andy Warhol’s Factory. Riedel once staged the composition by arranging friends in similar positions at Oskar-von-Miller Strasse 16, and for this exhibition, he has built to measure the original table according to the photograph. The recreation of objects and places has been a long-standing part of his practice, and here extends to include the backdrop to the Pop artist’s table. Yet rather than creating reproductions that could be mistaken for the originals, Riedel’s focus is on the process of the copying act and everything that happens along the way. Part of an overriding system devised by the artist that autonomously and continuously spurs new work, they occupy the distinction between the original and the copy.
Coinciding with the exhibition will be the launch of Oskar, an updated version of an artist book first published in 2003. While the earlier volume documented the first three years of activities at Oskar-von-Miller Strasse 16, this new edition chronicles the ensuing ten years, including various relocations of the venue following the deconstruction of the original building. The design and production of books occupy a stand-alone part of Riedel’s practice, and Oskar is at once a record and a perpetuation of the “record, label, playback” dictum.
The exhibition marks the tenth anniversary of Riedel’s Freitagsküche, a restaurant-type space first opened in 2004 at Oskar-von-Miller Strasse 16 in Frankfurt. A meeting point and “place in social reality”, which serves communal dinners on Friday nights and more recently also lunch from Monday to Friday, Freitagsküche moves to London for the private dinner following the opening night in its first appearance outside of Germany.
Michael Riedel was born in 1972 and currently lives and works in Frankfurt, where he received a Meisterschüler at the Städelschule in 2000. Since joining David Zwirner in 2004, the artist has had four solo exhibitions at the gallery in New York: Neo (2005), Filmed Film (2008), The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog (2011), and PowerPoint (2013).
In 2013, Riedel was invited by the Palais de Tokyo in Paris to create a series of three site-specific installations in the museum’s event space. Currently on view is the first presentation, Jacques comité [Giacometti], for which the artist covered the walls and floor with 4073 “o’s” extracted from the transcript of a recording made during the deinstallation of a Giacometti exhibition at the Hamburger Kunsthalle. The artist’s second installation, titled Dual air [Dürer], opens April 24, 2014, and repurposes materials from a recent Albrecht Dürer show at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt.
Over the past decade, Riedel has shown in both solo and group exhibitions at prominent venues throughout the United States and Europe. In 2012, his work was the subject of a major survey, Kunste zur Text, at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. Other venues which have hosted recent solo exhibitions include the Kunstverein Hamburg (2010); Städel Museum, Frankfurt (2009 and 2008); and the Kunstraum Innsbruck, Austria (2007). The artist has participated in
a number of international group shows, including those organised by the Sprengel Museum Hannover (2012); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2011); Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (GAM), Turin (2010); Tate Modern, London (2009); Kunsthalle Bern (2008 and 2006); Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art, France (2007); Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2005); and the Secession, Vienna (2003).