Untitled (16). 2011
Silkscreen on linen. 229.9 x 170.2 cm

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Untitled (1). 2011
Silkscreen on linen. 229.9 x 170.2 cm

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Untitled. 2011
Silkscreen on linen. 229.9 x 170.2 cm

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Untitled (18) 2011
Silkscreen on linen. 229.9 x 170.2 cm

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Untitled (17) 2011
Silkscreen on linen. 229.9 x 170.2 cm

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Untitled. 2011
Silkscreen on linen. 229.9 x 170.2 cm

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Untitled (2). 2011
Silkscreen on linen. 229.9 x 170.2 cm

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Installation view of the 2011 solo exhibition The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog at David Zwirner, New York

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Installation view of the 2011 solo exhibition The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog at David Zwirner, New York

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Invitation card for the 2005 solo exhibition Neo at David Zwirner, New York

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Printed and unprinted posters. 2008
42 offset prints on paper with accompanying postcard

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Installation view at Michel Rein, Paris. 2010

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MICHAEL RIEDEL is a German artist who uses text since the late ’90s as his source material and employs a wide range of media and formats including large-scale works on canvas, fabric works, film and video, audio recordings, artist’s books, posters, installations and events to examine its various manifestations.

With his most recent exhibition, “The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog,” showing at David Zwirner (New York) through March 19th, RIEDEL uses bits and portions of Internet pages where his works were mentioned and used the “select-all” function to copy-and-paste the contents into a textbox in InDesign, from which the posters were ultimately printed.

Divorced from a graphically-designed layout, the words appear in a linear, but nonsensical, order and include algorithmic commands, search keywords, and links, intermixed with miscellaneous sentences on the artist, copyright phrases, and contact information. RIEDEL affixed a quarter of a circular shape to the corners of each poster, partially obscuring the text. He has further highlighted an individual word on each canvas, such as “click,” “type,” “color,” referring to computational commands, while also reflecting the steps and techniques used to produce the works. Common for the different fragments of text is not so much that names, nouns, verbs, letters, punctuation, and syntax are re-appropriated, but that text itself becomes a material that the artist can work with.

Tactile and playful constructions, these canvases embody the particular “click-aesthetic” that permeates the artist’s larger oeuvre. Good news: the book “Printed and Unprinted Posters” is now available in the WFW Store.