Christian Moeller

Open Encounters

Public Art – Sculpture, Relief, Installation

This publication documents a series of ambitious, large-scale projects produced by Christian Moeller within the public sphere between 2004 and 2023. During these years, the artist’s practice underwent a considerable shift in focus. Renouncing his former self-designation as “media architect”, Moeller began to downplay the role of information technology within his work to instead emphasize its pictorial and sculptural qualities. The works in this volume are based on a keen observation of social processes, often with a view to their playful disruption. At once fitting into and standing out from their surroundings, they present the public with a welcome reprieve from the routines of workaday life. “Open Encounters” offers an exhaustive, lavishly illustrated overview of a highly productive period in Moeller’s practice. The book features a career-spanning essay and running commentary on individual works by Jan Tumlir as well as texts by Harriet F. Senie, Cath Brunner, Tim Griffin and Christian Moeller himself.

This publication documents a series of ambitious, large-scale projects produced by Christian Moeller within the public sphere between 2004 and 2023. During these years, the artist’s practice underwent a considerable shift in focus. Renouncing his former self-designation as “media architect”, Moeller began to downplay the role of information technology within his work to instead emphasize its pictorial and sculptural qualities. The works in this volume are based on a keen observation of social processes, often with a view to their playful disruption. At once fitting into and standing out from their surroundings, they present the public with a welcome reprieve from the routines of workaday life. “Open Encounters” offers an exhaustive, lavishly illustrated overview of a highly productive period in Moeller’s practice. The book features a career-spanning essay and running commentary on individual works by Jan Tumlir as well as texts by Harriet F. Senie, Cath Brunner, Tim Griffin and Christian Moeller himself.

Author(s): Christian Moeller

Introduced by Jan Tumlir

With contributions by Cath Brunner, Tim Griffin, Harriet F. Senie

Design: Integral Lars Müller

16,5 × 24 cm, 6 ½ × 9 ½ in

256 pages, 168 illustrations

paperback

2024, 978-3-03778-756-4, English
CHF 40.00
New

Christian Moeller

Christian Moeller (*1959) is a German-born sculptor and installation artist. He grew up in Frankfurt am Main, where he lived and worked until he moved to the United States in 2001. As a pioneer in his field, Moeller first gained widespread recognition in the 1990s working with electronic media technologies. His light installations and sound sculptures, which change in “real time,” have won him an international reputation. Over the past two decades he has been increasingly focused on the field of public art. He consistently seeks to present his audience with forms that are open to multiple readings, and moreover readings that can suddenly flip. Underlying his work’s broad-based appeal to civic celebration is a subtle criticality directed toward constraining political forces. Moeller taught as a professor at the State College of Design in Karlsruhe, Germany, until he joined the department of Design Media Arts at UCLA in 2001. He operates his studio in Downtown Los Angeles.