tobikeck

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In Wales and round about Wales ({{{:)

„i have read eaten your book with more pain than pleasure“ Adam Sedgwick Trilobite to Charles Darwin 1859

In the beginning there was the trilobite…and masses of it “dawdled” around (file under: “to dawdle – to daddle – to play” [Rainald Goetz: Abfall für Alle (Garbage for Everyone). 1999, p. 18.]) in the primordial oceans of the Cambrian period around 521 million years ago. We owe the term and concept of the Cambrian to Adam Sedgwick, one of the fathers of modern geology, who, in 1835, gave the Latin name of Wales (Cambria) to the clay slate strata which were first exposed in the north of that country. Since the Cambrian, quite a lot of water has evaporated. At some point the trilobite, because it did not want to go ashore, had to bite the dust. Today only fossilized exoskeletons bear witness to its once abundant existence. Sadly extinct. Bloody “survival of the fittest”! Rest in peace, little crab.

Ok, don't fall asleep. Fast forward. we're almost there.

Tobi Keck transfers the evolutionary madness of the “Cambrian explosion” directly into our present day by making trilobites and slates tangible in his “Eater of Worlds” exhibition and erecting a site of cult worship for the prehistoric crustacean. We are offered a playful time travel experience that builds an aesthetic bridge between the ages. Thus, a kind of bracket is created ({{{:), which encompasses a timespan of over 500 million years.

Can we perhaps go one size smaller? No! "I am eternal, child. I am the eater of worlds, and of children. And you are next!" (Pennywise a.k.a. Stephen King's IT [the clown, not the band])

Keck himself is a seeker who takes the eternally recurring world eater (a.k.a. trilobite) very seriously, declaring it his personal hobbyhorse, which has accompanied him in his artistic practice since 2015. He mourns for its passing and at the same time cannot fully come to terms with the extinction of the little scavengers and recyclers; he reproduces the trilobite en masse and thus keeps it alive artistically and artificially. The resistant crustacean appears again and again and again, becoming a wanderer between worlds, as it were. An original fossil, which lies in a glass coffin at the center of the exhibition, is a reminder of its past and its death.

Calm down! I am not dead! Which part of eternal did you not understand?

However, this is not a coffin at all, but a terrarium, and creatures with visual echoes of the fossil - revenants - live here in harmonious neighbourliness with their predecessor. Quite lively Rollie Pollies dawdle around on this Bio-TV, eating and reproducing live, and feeding the fiction of the small “Cambrian Park”. Digitally reproduced and lovingly scripted, the best scenes from this drama of (isopod) life appear again on the big LED screen on the front wall. Double utilization, so to speak. And besides, given the attention span of our digital present, no one can really expect us to wait and watch… remember: thou art mortal!

As a mass-produced plaster replica, the heaped fossil encounters us once again at the calvariae locum or “place of the skull”. The ideal place for a brief meditation on the tense relationship between image and likeness, original and copy, past and future, as well as (re)production and consumption. Mass-produced, the trilobite also appears as an emoticon in its latest transformation for the time being. In this form, presumably discovered by Tobi Keck, the Eater of Worlds conquers the digital space in an abstract and symbolic way as a logo/brand. A renewed return to the analogue space can be seen in the stamp print and the large slate wall work. Here the bracket is finally closed, as clay slate, trilobite and digital continuation come together as a symbol. Geology, biology, industry, culture, nature and digitality dance a roundelay, whirling as a vortex-like “everflow”, into which Tobi Keck lustily draws us… “And you are next!”

Text by Dr. Markus Wiegandt, Literary scholar, University of Leipzig (GER), June 2025; English translation by Ella Krivanek

Exhibition poster design by Twee Whistler

The exhibition was kindly funded by Liebelt Stiftung Hamburg

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({{{:) 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.

© Tobi Keck + VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2025

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

The main wall of the exhibtion space was covered with 473 common DIN A4 sheets of recycling paper, hand stamped with the Trilobite emoticon. By leaving gaps within the text block, a symmetrical trio of pictograms - an hour glass and piles of paper sheets - is written into the arrangement. This very hourglass is also known as the processing mouse cursor of Microsoft Windows and obvisiously is a central symbol of Memento Mori iconography, metaphorizing time running out. The paper sheet icons originate from the well known 1990 Microsoft font Wingdings. Instead of machine-copying the single paper sheets of the wall, they were put by hand with a classic analogue rubber stamp and ink, making them each a uniform but individual print.

© Tobi Keck + VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2025

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({{{:) 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.

© Tobi Keck + VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2025

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

After 10 years of carrying this body of work about cambrian Trilobites as a symbol of time and erosion with me, it manifested in a brief stop in form of a solo exhibition at Dresden's C. Rockefeller Center of the Contemporary Arts.

By the name 'Eater of Worlds', Stephen King's alien monster a.k.a. Pennywise or IT entitles itself to the group of brave children who were fighting it down. Decomposing crustaceans like recent isopods - or Rollie Pollies - are themselves another kind of 'Eater of Worlds' since they take care of many sorts of organic litter by digesting it into fresh soil. The name of the evil alien here turns into an essential and friendly life form maintaining a fragile eco system by consuming the earth's leftovers and thereby creating new recources to keep the weel of life turning.

By accompanying the living species with the long extinct fossil remains of the prehistoric Trilobites, I wanted to give the viewers a playful time-travel-experience and depict a vivid Memento Mori of everlasting (re)production and consumption.

Starting from the bare biological body of the creatures, the artworks in the show are made of several different media and levels of abstraction. The animal finds its latest translation in a text block of emoticons that immitate their body shape. emerged from daily use of text messaging, the highly abundant life form took an evolutionary leap from biological reproduction to endless digital copy and paste.

The exhibtion took place from June 20 until June 30, 2025.

© Tobi Keck + VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2025

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Transformer

site specific installation for a solo exhibition at @songs_for_alice located on Spinnerei Leipzig, 11. jan. - 08. feb. 2025

The piece on the ceiling of the space shows a grotesque one-eyed face with a curly cable coming out of the cyclops' eye. The face is modeled from large amounts of common aluminum tin foil. The cable is plugged in a quadruple cable reel that represents an electric eye ball of the beast. On the other end of the wire is a big strobe light, pointing back at the ceiling. The device is placed down in a pit in the room. The pit is also filled with numerous coins, like a wishing well. In darkness or doors closed, the fast strobe light reflecting flashing on the blank metallic surfaces created an intense visual sensation, up to a small loss of orientation.

In the side room, which also contains remarkable original infrastructure of the former high voltage power supply station, a series of drawings is displayed on the main wall. The five aluminum-framed pencil drawings show alternative versions of the cyclops face in the main room. The drawings are highlighted with passe-partouts made of sanded aluminum sheets with oblique edges around its cut out.

Transformer (installation)

2025; aluminum tinfoil, cable reel, strobe light, coins; in situ ca. 5,70 x 2,40 x 2,80 m

Transformer (drawings)

2025; pencil drawings, aluminum frame, aluminum passe-partout; 10 x 10 [20 x 20] cm

© Tobi Keck + VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2025

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Sinister Character #4 #1 #2

2020/2024; Burlap thread stitched onto found scrap fabrics. Padded and framed into scrap pallet timber; each 55 x 45 x 4 cm

(wooden sculpture in the right by Paul Waak)

A new series of works, first shown at Home Zone, the duo exhibition with Paul Waak at Backhaus Projects, Berlin Neukölln, Nov. 2024.

fotos © Amaan Hassen, 2024

© Tobi Keck + VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2024

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Home Zone

a duo exhibition together with Paul Waak at Berlin's Backhaus Projects in Weserstraße Neukölln. 07. - 15. November 2024

The scenery had been wrapped in a plastic membrane from the floor over the walls to the ceiling and thus carefully protected from the outside world. Displayed on this sterile thin layer was a collection of sculptures and paintings that depicted a crowd of grotesque faces and figures dipped into bright colors and familiar yet also peculiar materials such as old wood, worn synthetics, shiny cold glass and fleshy organics. Dedicated to the bare fact of bringing our fundamentally different artistic positions together, many of the works were put into direct physical touch, almost merging them into all new colaborative pieces, just for the moment of the show.

fotos © Amaan Hassen

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𓍊𓋼𓍊𓋼𓍊 The book is out now! 𓍊𓋼𓍊𓋼𓍊

After 3 years of the online release of Big Fungus, the mushroom-driven offsite exhibition turned into this 160-pages book. It holds photographs of all 48 positions of artworks from the groupshow and was enhanced with 9 texts written by international scientists, writers and artists such as Nazanin Saeidi, Rob Dunn or Teresa Ende and even a chef's recipe by Manuela Donnet.

For more info and purchase, follow this link:

© Tobi Keck + VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2025

[tobikeck]

Ultra tired

a quick vegetable expression of a common condition, installed at the group exhibition Grober Unfug, curated by Clara Pistner at Haus der Statistik, Alexanderplatz Berlin.

Kohlrabi, magnets; ca. 2 x 2 m; March 2024

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DOPE HOPE

welded €-Cents; 52x42x1,5 cm

shown at THC THX, a groupshow on four-twenty 2024 at Raum für drastische Maßnahmen, Berlin.

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The spirits of Ethanol Car / Ghost in the machine

handcarved sculptures of garden ivory (radish), preserved in pure ethanol; HxBxT 24x15x11cm

April 2024 at Werkschauhalle Spinnerei Leipzig; Kunsthalle.Ost

fotos by Robert Schittko (l.) and Hannes Uhlenhaut (r.)

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Ethanol Car a.k.a. Ghost in the machine a.k.a. SPIRITUALIZER III

at Werkschauhalle Spinnerei Leipzig during Frühlingsrundgang

> SPACES - Leipziger Kunsträume im Fokus: Marcel Walldorf, Robert Schittko and Tobi Keck for Kunsthalle.Ost, April 2024

(dog sculpture by Marcel Walldorf; fotos by Robert Schittko and Hannes Uhlenhaut)

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Eternal harvest

2024; manipulated vegetables, ethanol, jars, chemical containers, wooden boards, stucco brackets; in-situ installation ca. 230 x 90 x 25 cm

This installation was shown in the group exhibition An' it harm none, do what thou wilt , curated by Okta Collective in February 2024 at Rosalux project space Berlin.

https://rosalux.com/

https://www.okta-collective.com/

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Eleventhousandfourhundredforty

2023; 11439 frozen green peas, 1 hand-carved frozen yellow pea; ca. 20 x 28 x 28 cm (life size)

solo exhibition at Berlin's coolest secret project space @Frieren_Room which is an actual deep-freeze chamber and showcases works in a sub-zero atmosphere.

The Pyramid constists of a solid architecture of frozen green peas. There are no adhesives added and it holds completely by statics and ice. On top rests a hand-carved yellow pea, depicting a human eye, apparently turning the whole sculpture into the historical motif of the all-seeing eye of providence.

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The work was featured in Dec. 2023 issue of art magazine (germany) in an article about Frieren Room, together with Hamburg-based artist Anna Ley.

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earlier this year I had the joy to get art of mine destroyed forever by the honorable offsite pioneers of New Scenario

The great Stresstest took place in March 2023 and included 80+ international artists and artworks. It was released online in collaboration with Creamcake and HAU Berlin.

check the full video of Round 1: The Spike Roller here:

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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.

fare well, Rüdiger