Olaf Metzel
Die die Die...

Like the Bondstore Lockers, Metzel’s aluminum wall sculptures exploit the creative potential of deformation – although here the aggressive act is only simulated and the form is actually the result of precise sculptural action. They show enlarged and thematically grouped newspaper clippings – folded and bent like carelessly crumpled newspaper or discarded artistic designs, making it impossible to fully grasp the original content. The result is a physical lightness that contrasts with the material and the technically complex execution: for the aluminum sculptures, digitally printed metal plates are deformed by hand until the object achieves a certain stability and has the desired aesthetics in terms of form and motif. Metzel uses templates from print media, newspapers, and books for this purpose. The fold entitled Empört (Outraged) reveals the word within a crumpled image of Douglas Kirkland’s photograph of contact strips from Andy Warhol’s Trash, Die die Die reads DIE GESAMTE VERDAMMTE KACKE (The Whole Damned Shit) – a motif from a book by Dieter Roth. Three of the original six copies of each of the two editions were reworked in 2019 and reissued as EB96 and EB98, in a limited edition of three copies each. The limited edition of the first version was also reduced to three copies as a result of the revisions.
Text: Eva Scharrer