≈ CLOUDS
2021
In the information forest of our time, which is full of cyphers and signets, logographic signs without discernible meaning exist as erratic symbols without function. By virtue of their composition, these constructions bear a certain resemblance to familiar letters, numerals, or punctuation marks. These works are based on the idea of a hypothetical use and therefore of meaning, in a future that is not more precisely defined. The clouds support the desire of discovering meaning, just as we often try to find something figurative in abstract forms.
The new series designed in 2026 addresses production and processes as much as the visual result. Based on libraries of glitch graphics developed over the past few years, these were repeatedly arranged in new constellations and explored through a wide variety of visual themes CHRONICALLY MISPLACED THINKER FROM THE MUSEUM OF MISTAKES now transfers this digital library into a figurative portrayal in the form of a portrait series. These abstract portraits play with the subject of “modern” art, referencing epochs from Cubism to collage and the dilettantish artistic forms of the 1980s. They culminate in a digitally/analogically shifted random principle of a “serial” arrangement that highlights the potential individuality of an expression. Kai Middendorff Gallery
WHATREALLYMATTERS
2021
Variations of the poster key visual for the Space for Visual Research workshop held in May 2018 at the graphic design institution “whatreallymatters” in Seoul/Korea. These spatially represented layers translate the design tasks of the students, who worked with different materials such as transparent foils, colored papers, and elastic mirror papers. During the workshop, these compositions condensed into completely new layers and became sources for new design themes.
Fine Art Pigment Prints auf Tecco Baryt
THE ELLIS ISLAND EFFECT
Poster
This work visualizes the renaming of former, mostly female, Hollywood stars, many of whom originated from Eastern Europe. They were early on institutionalized as pure brand products and characters in order to construct a purely "American" biography—intended to support box office revenues for production companies rather than provoke potential criticism, especially during the McCarthy era.
2022
Fine Art Pigment Prints auf Tecco Baryt
100 x 140cm
MIRRORED COLOURS
2017
Analog color spaces were created using elastic mirrors that can simultaneously capture the front and back sides of colored paper in space. This series was created in the context of the Space for Visual Research, a space for visual experimentation based at my graphic design professorship in Weimar, Germany. It explores the photographic documentation of both sides of an object in one image.
Fine Art Pigment Print, 40 x 30 cm • Edition of 5 (+ 2 a.p.)
GRAVITATIONS
2012
Palm-sized geometric bodies cut by means of a laser are randomly placed in a picture frame designed for this purpose. Because these arrangements were realized in the horizontal plane, gravity plays a not insignificant role in the arrangement of these geometries. The premise of this work is the examination of graphic compositions from an aesthetic point of view. It is about the evaluation of successful or unsuccessful arrangements, subject to the condition of physical laws.
Fine Art Pigment Prints auf Tecco Baryt
80 x 60 cm
MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main
Inv. Nr. 2013/22.1-8
Shown at William Forsythe. The Fact of Matter
GRIDLESS NOTATIONS
Corporate Identity
Diagrams explain the important themes for designers: „looking at ideas“, „taste classified“ and „What you have to say“ as the basis of creative output.
2022
Fine Art Pigment Prints auf Tecco Baryt
100 x 140cm
BAUPLASTIKEN
Research Project
Two models by Prof. Hubert Schiefelbein were staged in space in an endless mirror room and photographed in different perspectives. Afterwards circles were cut out of the photo originals. Through the mirror space the sculptures regain their original seriality. Universität Weimar
STONES
A collection of these digitally designed stones, presented on a monitor, is understood as an artistic work. The focus of the piece lies in the digital representation and reproduction of the external appearance of stones. Less attention was given to the specific material properties (such as basalt, crystal, etc.) or their differences in size (from a grain of sand to a massive rock), and more to the diverse shapes of their outer form.
The beginning of the end of time
10.09. - 21.10.2011
"The Beginning of the End of Time" is an extension of Weisbeck's typograhy-oriented work, in which he stages textual images in a time-based context to further displace them. Formally implemented, the textual images are taken from the shape and content of words and letters and are scaled from the negative space of typography, referencing the measure of time and the resulting kinetics.
COOPER COMPOSINGS
2012
Compositions using material from the teaching archive of US graphic designer Murial Cooper (†1994) and her Visible Language Workshop (1977-1994). This work began with an invitation to view Cooper’s archive of instructional materials at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2012 as a contribution to the exhibition The Future Archiv at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.). During research at MIT, colored transparent plastic sheets were discovered demonstrating additive color behavior in offset printing. As a part of the Visible Language Workshop, offset printing experiments were conducted with students whose mission was to understand authorship as a collective process. In these Messages and Means themes, the students’ individual graphic works were put on paper in a 90-degree rotation, each pass printed in a different color. This turned the offset printing press into an artistic tool. Students collaborated in the plate-making process and altered the ink application - they rotated the paper to introduce a moment of interaction into the printing process. Overprinting created new color and shape compositions. In the workshop, students were editor, platesetter, printer, typesetter, and designer at once, in overlapping and repetitive configurations. The transparencies found in the archive served to illustrate this process, without the need for a printing press. “Cooper Composings” was created with the original material on a light table, which was also located in the archive’s depot.
Fine Art Pigment Print • 77 mm x 57 mm
2, 3, 4
Agi Special Project
2022
Offset print, 10 x 10cm
DO THE STARS NEED A REASON TO SHINE
The literary source material for Weisbeck’s typographic works comes from his childhood friend Christian Arends. From 1985 to 1990, they shared an apartment and spent much time consuming television, radio, and recordings. After Arends’ death in 1998, a collection of his texts was found on an old Atari hard drive, including two stories and many poetic fragments and slogans. Weisbeck transforms these “construction sites and ruins of wordcraft” into typographic image-works on large wooden panels and displays, often using airbrush techniques. The works both honor Arends’ hidden creativity and evoke the shared cultural atmosphere of the late 1980s and early 1990s. By deliberately reducing readability, Weisbeck slows down perception and shifts typography away from purely functional use. This creates dense text-images in which writing and image merge rather than oppose each other. With Do the Stars Need a Reason to Shine, he presents this long-developed approach to the public. In 2009, Krome Gallery first showed his works, featuring typographic compositions of poetic word inventions influenced by 1990s pop culture aesthetics.
01.08. - 11.09.2009