ART COLOGNE Premieres Large-scale Installation
The Artist Michael Riedel has been commissioned to create a large-scale work for the entrance hall of Art Cologne
ART COLOGNE is opening its doors to the international art world from 26 to 29 April 2017. As one of this year's many highlights, visitors will encounter a site-specific art installation of German artist Michael Riedel in the entrance hall of the fair.
With this year's premier artist commission, the artist Michael Riedel has chosen to scrutinize aspects of the art fair and the art market. The installation titled "L" takes it's inspiration both from the booth architecture and hidden mechanics behind the ART COLOGNE. Riedel has created a pattern text based on a transcription of one of the selection meetings of galleries to the fair, which concerned the approval or rejection of galleries applying to ART COLOGNE 2017.
The approximately three hour-long recording resulted in a 29-page document with a total of 53,689 characters, in which the letter L appears 1,894 times. With the resulting "L" installation, Riedel presents an objective new visibility in which he makes the area of unrealised possibilities visible.
On a floor area of 350 square meters (3,150 square feet), Riedel transforms the communication derived from the art system into complex graphic patterns.
"We are pleased to have been able to realise this special project together with Michael Riedel. In the coming years, we will commission a contemporary artist each year to intervene in the architecture of ART COLOGNE. The goal will be to direct the focus to a strong large-scale singular statement instead of to several large format projects", explains Daniel Hug, director of ART COLOGNE.
For the occasion, a publication "Muster des Kunstsystems (Patterns of the art system) [Wallpapers]" will also be published in cooperation with the Distanz publishing house. Assembling patterns from previous projects by Riedel, for example, in the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), the Sprengel Museum (Hannover), the "Kunste zu Text (Art about text) exhibition in the Schirn (Frankfurt), and which provide up-to-date insights into his architectural works, such as the facade design of the Moderne Galerie des Saarlandmuseums in Saarbrücken and the roof design of the Cornell Tech University in New York.
Further works by Michael Riedel can be viewed at ART COLOGNE in the David Zwirner (New York, London) and Gabriele Senn (Vienna) galleries.
The Kunsthalle Zurich is also opening the "CV" exhibition of Michael Riedel on 19 May 2017.
