Curated by Daniel Baumann

Frankfurt-based Michael Riedel is the creator of a parallel universe replete with artworks, artifacts, and cultural situations that look just like their counterparts in our own reality, only subtly distorted. Taking the résumé as both material and structure, “CV” will cover the period from 1994 to 2017 and will include barely known early works that anticipate the artist’s more visible artistic projects involving publishing, recordings, gastronomy (the Freitagsküche in Frankfurt, for example), and the restless activities in the studio/performance space Oskar-von-Miller-Straße 16. Having lived for a decade in the same German city as Riedel, I’ve been continuously drawn into his world of echoes and replicas, and will be surprised if I don’t detect inverted and displaced versions of artworks, exhibitions, and texts by friends (or myself) in his upcoming show. There’s no telling what will become part of Riedel’s puzzling and expansive curriculum vitae. 

— Daniel Birnbaum