David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Michael Riedel, on view at the gallery's 533 West 19th Street space. This will be the artist's fourth solo show at the gallery.
Since the late 1990s, Michael Riedel has advanced his own model of a self-sustaining artistic production, continuously using reproductions as a means to "reintroduce the system of art into the art system." PowerPoint takes its point of departure in the artist's last solo exhibition at David Zwirner entitled The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog (2011). Where this show reflected digital distribution processes–with Poster Paintings featuring information from websites communicating Riedel's work as their backgrounds–the present exhibition takes the process a step further, allowing the system to recreate itself once more. It includes new works made by combining two Poster Paintings using an animated feature in PowerPoint, the software program used by the artist when delivering presentations on his work. Riedel has "frozen" the particular transition between two slides, generating a new work that takes place between two existing works. In a further variation of the idea, some Poster Paintings were merged with a blank page. The fact that each new work creates a gap that can be filled again suggests the idea of endless production.
The two exhibitions thus contain distinct translations of the same visual source material. Where the Poster Paintings in the earlier show were hung against wallpaper printed with text from David Zwirner's website, the PowerPoint Paintings are displayed against wallpaper featuring patterns from individual Poster Paintings. Twenty individual show cards each presenting different PowerPoint effects will also be on view. In mailings announcing the opening, a CD was included featuring a song by Woog Riots created for the exhibition, with lyrics taken verbatim from the text on the show card.