Köpfe

• Stefan Mück

With his Superform (Super-Shape), German artist and graphic designer Thomas Bayrle developed an aesthetic formula, which describes the loss of human individuality in our mass society. Principles of repetition, serialization and rasterization play a vital role in the formula: clone-like replication of individual elements are then attached to each other to create a superior form, which, although it removes everyone’s individuality, at the same time holds out the prospect of a collective model of identity.

Bayrle visualizes this principle in the image series Atari Faces, which he worked on together with his then student Stefan Mück from 1988 to 1991. Mück developed a computer program for an Atari ST4 – one of the first widespread home computers with a graphic user interface – with which photographs that had been uploaded onto the computer could be distorted or collaged into extensive portraits.

The images depict various people from Bayrle’s immediate or more distant social environment: Stefan Mück; Kasper König, a curator and friend of the artist; the CDU politician and sports functionary Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder; Ralf Frenzel, a friend and wine merchant from Bonn; Japanese art dealer Masaomi Unagami; and – in the style of portraits by Thomas Ruff – Bayrle’s friend Christine Bernhard and the pastors Ralf Mueller and Petra Grote.



»Atari Faces« in the ZKM Collection:

»Stefan Mück«, 1990, 86 × 62 cm

»Portikus – Kasper I«, 1990, 77,5 × 75 cm

»Portikus – Kasper II«, 1990, 86 × 62 cm

»Südmilch – M.V.«, 1990, 78 × 70 cm

»Schloss Stuttgart – M.V.«, 1990, 86 × 62 cm

»Weinhändler«, 1990, 86 × 62 cm

»From A to B – Unagami I«, 1991, 86 × 62 cm

»Inge«, 1990, 86 × 62 cm

»Pfarrer – Verinnerlichung« (Pastor – internalization), 1990, 86 × 62 cm

»Pfarrerin – Verinnerlichung« (Woman pastor – internalization), 1990, 86 × 62 cm