Michael Riedel: CV

German artist Michael Riedel (*1972) has spent the past 20 years in creating a body of work that is often misunderstood and bears almost no comparison with any other. Similar to the Gemini’s spell, by which an object is multiplied through minimal contact, and then those multiplications come to be multiplied further, Riedel’s works are the temporal evidence of a perpetual process within the systems of art.

In his work PowerPoint, for example, which will be part of the exhibition CV, Riedel documents randomly generated transitions from one PowerPoint slide to the next. Here, his focus lies on the infinite transformations and possibilities enabled by technology. In an interview he recently explained: “It is like the ‘telephone game,’ only I’m not just interested in the end result—not just version B of version A—but the possibilities for versions C, D, E, F, G, and H.”

CV offers the most complete and entertaining introduction into Riedel’s artistic endeavor so far. The exhibition focuses on the idea of repetition and the spaces created by it. There is no such thing as two identical moments, this oeuvre says, but each re-entry is a transformative act opening room for chance, stutters, and misunderstandings. Yet, this is the place where the glitch becomes protagonist, where explanations are needed and communication happens, and where poetry comes into play.
 
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue with texts by Michael Riedel and Daniel Baumann, as well as installation views at Kunsthalle Zürich. The launch of the catalogue will take place in the afternoon of June 11, 2017. It will be accompanied by a talk between Daniel Baumann, Silke Hohmann (art critic), Jörg Heiser (art critic) and Michael Riedel. This event will be held in German.