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POMERANZ COLLECTION

MICHAEL RIEDEL

Four Proposals for the Change of Modern (21-24)
2009
Black cotton
300 x 290 cm
Unique
Inv. Nr. 119
Installation view: Galerie Michel Rein, Paris

Born in 1972 in Frankfurt, Germany
Lives and works in Frankfurt, Germany

Michael Riedel was first recognized for his projects and interventions at the experimental art space, Oskar-von-Miller Strasse 16 in Frankfurt, that he founded in 2000, together with Dennis Loesch. Their program was based on events relating to recording, labelling and playback. Michael Riedel is also known for his published books, magazines, catalogues, brochures, posters and postcards. His work persistently deals with existing texts used as material.

Four Proposals for the Change of Modern is part of a series of hanging banners made of large pieces of black cloth in which the shapes of letters have been cut out. These letters, taken out of the foreground, are rendered almost illegible by the drapes of the unstructured fabrics. In this version, they form the word “modern”, which comes from the logo of the exhibition space in which it was first exhibited, the Modern Institute in Glasgow. Each piece of fabric can be displayed in four different ways. The cut out portions are used as stencils for digital prints on white canvas. Through this method, increasing the number of possible ways of hanging his work, Michael Riedel is questioning the copy process, confronted with the mutability of form and the disintegration of language.