Supergabe 2022/2023
The Supergabe is a yearly-changing artwork edition that all Super Super Markt members receive as part of their membership (€50/year). Join our community today to collect yours.
For 2022/2023, we’re thrilled to announce that the Supergabe is an edition by Cologne-based artist Michail Pirgelis.
The work of Michail Pirgelis updates the traditions of post-minimalism, the readymade and conceptual art while simultaneously resisting them. His process usually begins with found materials from aircraft cemeteries in California and Arizona, where disused passenger planes wait to be dismantled and recycled. The artist explores the limits of our understanding of objects, while radically expanding our experience of the sculptural.
About the edition
Michail Pirgelis
fly OK fly SUPER, 2022
C-Print on carton
9.1 x 5.9 cm
Courtesy: The artist, Sprüth Magers & Super Super Markt
The edition fly Ok fly SUPER is based on a modified and abstracted vintage playing card, which comes from the artist’s collection of airline playing cards – containing more than a thousand Joker motifs. The decks were distributed to passengers on mostly intercontinental flights and served as in-flight entertainment as a social game known across cultural boundaries.
The Joker, an ambivalently funny as well as tragic figure, can be found in centuries-old depictions of the Jester’s art history and still offers fascination for character portrayals in contemporary film as well as literature. On its card, the Joker appears standing on a globe with Concordes bubbling from a magnum champagne bottle, conveying the spirit of a past aviation era that stood for elegance, luxury, progress, internationalism and curiosity.
Michail Pirgelis
Michail Pirgelis was born in Essen, Germany in 1976. He now lives and works in Cologne, Germany.
Education
Michail Pirgelis studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 2003 until 2009.
Exhibitions
Pirgelis' work has been presented in numerous international solo exhibitions, including: FUHRWERKSWAAGE, Cologne (2022); Odyssey, Cologne (2022); Sprüth Magers, Berlin (2022); BRAUNSFELDER, Cologne (2019, with Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt); Sculpture in the City, London (2018); Leopold-Hoesch-Museum, Düren (2016, with David Ostrowski)
His work has also been shown in selected group exhibitions, including: Lantz’scher Skulpturenpark, Düsseldorf (2022); Ludwig Forum, Aachen (2020); DuMont Kunsthalle, Cologne (2019); Kunsthalle Nuremberg (2019); Haus N, Athens (2019); Athens Biennale (2018), Kunstverein Reutlingen (2018); Marta Herford, Herford (2018); Rubell Family Collection, Miami (2015); Istanbul Modern (2014); Bundeskunsthalle Bonn (2013); Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen (2012); Thessaloniki Biennale (2011), Kunstmuseum Bonn (2010)
