Michael Riedel

Michael Riedel (born July 12, 1972) is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Frankfurt.

His work operates at the interface between applied graphics and free art.

Riedel studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris and the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main from 1994 to 2000.

There he became a master student of Hermann Nitsch.

The "S."

that Riedel temporarily included in his name originated from his time at the Städelschule.

Starting with a signature without a work (signet), which marks the non-existent works as a blank space, the work complex Signetische Zeichnung (1994-1995) emerges with over one thousand drawings in the form of 61 sheets and 36 books.

He first used the name "Michael S.. Riedel" - at that time in lower case throughout - as an inscription on a paper bag that he put over his head in 1997 at the end of a lecture he had given at the Städelschule.

The letter "S."

was fictitious.

He sold it to a friend ten years later.

She has carried it in her name ever since.

His idea of a functioning work of art in the form of a drawing that draws itself emerged during his studies.

Following his studies, he initiates the art space Oskar-von-Miller Strasse 16 (2000) in Frankfurt am Main together with Dennis Loesch in a vacant residential building "It's about a space full of possibilities, but none of them is as interesting as the space itself, which contains the possibilities".

How Art Reprogramms the World'' (2002).

He sees in artistic procedures of rearranging and reprogramming the potential of a resistance against market-shaped culture.

Riedel's claim to autonomy for art, however, goes beyond this.

He allows a kind of "parallel world to emerge from echoes, afterimages and replicas", the reception of which he incorporates into his graphic work, exposing it to further receptions and thus making the "seemingly endless quantity of printed matter" his actual subject.

"Recording - labelling - playing" becomes the basic principle of artistic production, the culmination of which is the reconstruction of the art space itself in the exhibition Kontext - Form - Troja (Wiener Secession, 2003).

The publication Oskar-a novel (2003) appears, with the transcript of a 2-day anecdotal conference and numerous illustrations of the events held, such as Clubbed Clubs and Filmed Films, etc. Excerpts translated into English are published by Riedel and Loesch as the False Frieze Art Fair Catalogue (2004) to accompany their stand at the art fair in London.

In 2004, the exhibition NOSNHO.-....... [ROBERT-JOHNSON] together wir the gallerist Michael Neff, the Frankfurt nightclub Robert Johnson was imitated.

The entire interior, however, was hung from the ceiling in reverse from bottom to top, and the dance music was played backwards.

With numerous situational duplications, Riedel presents the reality found in each case as also-possible.

He himself calls this the "zero point of creativity".

Nicolas Bourriaud has described this trend from a curatorial perspective in relation to information culture in ''Postproduction: Culture as Screenplay.

In 2004, Riedel founded the Freitagsküche at Oskar-von-Miller-Straße, a culinary and social meeting point, a restaurant where artists cooked for visitors and which was only open one evening a week.

After the demolition of the art space, Riedel and Loesch temporarily moved their artistic activities as well as the Freitagsküche to Berlin-Mitte, at Weydinger Strasse 20.

Riedel's first exhibition in New York at David Zwirner is titled Neo (2005) and refers to the Neo Rauch exhibition previously shown at the same venue.

Programmatically, he uses the information material with which the gallery had previously communicated Rauch's paintings, to re-stage it.

The original foreword of the Neo Rauch catalogue Painters, Germans and other Renegades later becomes the catalogue text And Germans other Painters, Renegades, sorted alphabetically by Riedel.

Until the building was demolished (2006), numerous events took place there that were simply repetitions of other events and subverted the usual art establishment with an "art of the incident".

The Tate Modern in London shows his large-scale canvases Vier Vorschläge zur Veränderung von Modern im Logo von The Modern Institute (2008).

In 2009, Riedel responded with a parallel project to the exhibition Meister von Flémalle and Rogier van der Weyden, which took place at the Städel in Frankfurt in 2009.

"The focus of his interest here is less on the artworks themselves than on the further processing of the visual material of the exhibits. Specifically, the mediation media - poster, flyer, postcards, catalogue of the exhibition - are used by Riedel to produce four variations (CMYK) of each of the printed products."

He produces variations of logos from well-known institutions.

in 2010 Riedel returned to Frankfurt, where the Freitagsküche still exists today.

He designed the space for the Freitagsküche's one-year guest performance at the Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt in 2015.

Since 2017, he has been professor of painting/graphics at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig.

Andreas Beyer calls Riedel, comparable to his Pauszeichnungen, a "pause" in the art system on the occasion of the exhibition CV(Curriculum Vitae) at the Kunsthalle Zurich in 2017.

"The self-perpetuating work in the sense of the concept of autopoiesis" as coined by Niklas Luhmann, is shown for the first time by the Museum für angewandte Kunst Frankfurt in the exhibition Michael Riedel - Grafik als Ereignis (2018).