Michel Rein is pleased to present the fifth solo exhibition by artist Michael Riedel with the gallery, following Record, label, play back’ (malentendu, ignorance, doubles flous), Paris (2015) ; Michael Riedel, Brussels (2013) ; Kunste zur text (Algorithmiques), Paris (2012) and Michael Riedel, Paris (2010).

Michael Riedel is one of the most influential artists of his generation and has recently had two major surveys at the Kunsthalle Zürich (2017) and at Frankfurt’s Museum Angewandte Kunst. Earlier this year, the MNAM-Centre Georges-Pompidou acquired a series of his works, currently on view in the Museum’s fourthfloor gallery.

[FIACER]… brings together works produced in 2017 and 2018. The title and outline of Michael Riedel’s exhibitions are always significant. By conjugating the word « FIAC », the artist explicitly references one of the world’s foremost contemporary art fairs, continuing his research into the notions of communication and linguistic interpretation and linking his exhibition to a key event in the French contemporary art market. Riedel exemplifies this connection by filling the exhibition showcases with bundles of bills, printed on banknote paper provided by the Deutsche Bundesbank and available for sale. The artist’s black-and-white money upsets the established economic framework by replacing the banknotes’ exchange value with code. Riedel’s aesthetic research has focused on the re-appropriation of certain elements of language, presented under one of their many potential declinations: at the heart of his practice, this approach exemplifies his view of art as a space for both the possible and the real.

In order to break away with conventional forms of spatial delimitation, Riedel has covered the gallery’s floors and walls with silkscreen prints, raising the possibility of extending the scope and reach of the artwork. This spatial expansion triggers an openended process of elaboration, giving life to a series of images animated by their very own dynamics. The series including the work Untitled (Printed Accessories for Anitech M90) depicts typewriter ribbons symbolizing Riedel’s transition from text to image, a fundamental part of his creative process. Michael Riedel born in 1972, lives and works in Frankfurt (Germany). Since 2017, he has been a professor of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig.

Michael Riedel’s works have been exhibited at MOMA (New York), Tate Modern (London), Kunsthalle (Zurich), Museum Angewandte Kunst (Frankfurt), Fondation d’entreprise Ricard (Paris), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), The Modern Institute (Glasgow), Städel Museum (Frankfurt), Kunsthaus Bregenz (Bregenz), Museum der Moderne (Salzburg), Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (Turin), Judisches Museum Wien (Vienna), Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College (Winter Park), GAM (Turin), COCO - Contemporary Concerns (Vienna), Renaissance Society (Chicago), Villa Arson (Nice), the Secession (Vienna), the Swiss Institute (New York), Le Box – Fonds M-ARCO (Marseilles), 9th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art, First Moscow Biennale, Saarland Museum Modern Gallery (Saarbrücken).

In 2017, Michael Riedel created two monumental installations, one for the recently-inaugurated Cornell Tech-Bloomberg Center in New York and the other for the Saarlandmuseum-Moderne Galerie in Saarbrücken for whitch he received with the architecture firm Kuehn Malvezzi the Dam Preis 2019.

His work has been collected by prestigious private and public collections, including the MNAM-Centre Georges-Pompidou, (Paris) the François Pinault Foundation (Venice), MoMA-The Museum of Modern Art (New York), Kunsthaus Zurich (Zurich), Yuz Fondation (Hong Kong) The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art at Rollins College, Cornell Fine Arts Museum (Winter Park), among others.