#tobikeck

Armatur No. 3

shown within the duo-exhibition CHAMBER, in company with Markus Heller at Kunstraum Ortloff, Leipzig, October 2025.

Bioturbation //  Superstimulus @ a&o Kunsthalle, Leipzig, 2019

({{{:) Eater of Worlds (:}}})

As a brand-like sculptural wall piece, the Trilobite emoticon stands as a bold title within the exhibition. The type of font used for the six characters that compose the image is Roboto Bold. Roboto is the standard text font installed in the Android smartphone operating system, from which this combination was (possibly) discovered by me during daily text messaging. The accurate shape of the characters were reproduced with the traditional craft technique of slate tiles, commonly known for covering roofs and facades of houses in several regions in Germany and elsewhere. The stone material itself comes from prehistoric times, even holding fossil animal remains such as Trilobites or Ammonites from the Cambrian in some of its mining sites. Color and shape of the slates refer directly to the physiognomy of the Isopods shown.

({{{:) Eater of Worlds (:}}})

The 2 by 3 meters LED screen showed 23 minutes of the Isopod's daily life activities in macro close-up video scenes. Social interactions, ingesting of vegetable litter and insect carrion and acts of mating were filmed in a small glass habitat. The landscape of the Isopod's home also held the real fossil Trilobite that was the model for the estimated five thousand plaster replica piled up in the exhibition space.

Rüdiger (based on a true story)

2023; instagram-manipulated photograph, silver pen, grave, flowers

This is the grave of Rüdiger. I buried his imaginary body for the group show 'Von Pionierpflanzen und Flâneusen', developed by Julia Kiehlmann. The exhibition surrounded the topic of abandoned and therefore vacant areas within the Eastside of Leipzig, highlighting the socio-political, ecological and also emotional meaning of these urban wastelands for their human visitors. I placed the grave on a nice spot next to a little bush, on a wide so-called 'Brache' underneath a car traffic bridge and besides train tracks. A perfect place to bury your beloved animal friend.

Rüdiger was an experienced tomcat living on a graveyard in Leipzig West. One of his eyes was dead and his fur was always a little filthy. He looked a little grumpy but he was actually a very friendly fella who also enjoyed some company, since he used to sit directly at the gate of the boneyard, where all the people would enter. Shortly after the first socially traumatizing lock-down, due to the pandemic, in 2020, he suddenly disappeared without a trace. His body was never found and people believe that some lonely soul kidnapped him as a companion. I kind of identified with that cat, ever since i first met him when i was doing a sculpture on that graveyard. One day, for no special reason - more as a little joke - I placed my own face on his picture with that simple spot camera in the instagram story tools (unfortunately the zuckerberg deactivated that nice tool a few years ago). This cute picture of Rüdiger (including my own hand in it, petting him) finally turned into a funny kind of ego-cam mirror self portrait. And I had turned into the Cheshire Cat version of Rüdiger. Needless to say, it somehow felt like burying myself in that lovely little grave under the bridge.

Vertumnus

Fresh vegetable piece for the duo-exhibtion FRIDAY THIRTEEN with Johannes Bünemann at Berlin’s Nachschlag Art Space on Friday, August 13 2021

2021; vegetables; 1 x 1 x 0,2 m

see the complete exhibition on tzvetnik here:

SPIRITUALIZER

solo exhibition at Sunnybrook Artcenter in September 2021

In the very special habitat of the discarded trailer which is the Sunnybrook Artcenter, I created a scenery of a messy, laboratory-like working space. On basis of liquid spirit a. k. a. pure ethanol, cabbage and roots vegetables were apparently processed into sinister ghosts in a jar. Between canisters, industrial containers, litter and rotting bodies of flora, empty-eyed faces and heads were starring from their shelfs. In dim light, the visitors were led into an abandoned place, only inhabited by the left-behind characters, preserved in their anthropomorphic afterlife.

Sunnybrook Artcenter is an offsite art space in the rural area near Leipzig, GER.

http://www.sunnybrookartcenter.com/about/

* Happy Birthday *