Michael
Riedel (born 1972 in Rüsselsheim, Germany) realized an early series of
works in 1994/95 that comprises more than 1,000 sheets of paper. This
series, titled “Signetische Zeichnung”, would go on to define Riedel’s
overall body of work. The starting point is the first letter of his
first name, M, which he stylizes into a decorative signet using a stamp
and gold paint. He shifts the axes of the original form, rotates it,
stretches, and compresses it, creating constructive and elaborate
permutations on individual sheets of paper, some of which he covers in
wax and binds in wax books together with blank sheets of paper, awaiting
new ideas. This bold early series, with its potential to be continued
indefinitely and its playing with the idea of a self-perpetuating
system, represents an approach for which Riedel has since become
well-known.
Riedel studied art in Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, and Paris from 1994 to 2000
and became professor of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig
in 2017. His art focuses on material advertising and mediating art –
posters, invitation cards, exhibition catalogs, and art magazines – to
which he applies strategies of appropriation, transmission, and
repetition. By manipulating these materials according to certain
principles and undermining their function in a way inherent to the
system of art, new branches emerge within a self-referential structure
that always includes already existing works as well as potential works
that may be realized later.
The work “Ohne Titel (fünf eins sechs sieben neun elf zwei)” from 2014
also appears to have undergone a dense and open-ended production
process. It consists of a set of 14 posters that can be reproduced as
often as desired. The set is presented either as a site-specific floor
or wall piece. The posters display the complete printed transcript of
conversations people had while installing his exhibition in the Vienna
Secession in 2003. In this exhibition, Riedel reconstructed the famous
Oskar-von-Miller Strasse 16, an art space he co-founded in Frankfurt in
2000. While, in principle, the transcripts printed on the posters could
be read as instructions for reconstructing the art space, Riedel
highlights the measurements, for example, by spelling them out (like in
the title of the work), also increasing the size of the writing.
Riedel’s art production thus seems less concerned with readability than
with text as an artistic material.
Eliza Lips