Over the course of the last fourt decades, Thomas Bayrle, who has been an influential teacher at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main between 1975 and 2002, has produced a comprehensive body of work whose basic principle is the seriality and repetition of simple motifs – in graphic works, silkscreen prints, textiles, wallpapers, sculptures and films . Mass production and accumulation are the guiding topoi of Bayrle’s works, oftentimes consisting of a compilation of identical forms and pictograms, for instance cups, cans or shoes, merged into a unified picture. It is this very addition of the same – or at least similar – motifs out of which Bayrle develops his famous „super-forms“. In these formations, the singular elements are never subjected to the hierarchy of an over-arching composition, thus creating allegories for the social relation between individuality and collectivity. For “Texte zur Kunst“ Thomas Bayrle has designed a fabric, with the motif of a cup stemming from 1968 woven into it, and then had the internationally renowned fashion label “clemens en august” produce a shirt. This transfer of serial motifs into the realm of fashion has been undertaken by Bayrle since the 1960s, for example for raincoats, skirts, trousers and trench coats. For Bayrle, who was trained as a weaver, textiles themselves are serial structures – and can therefore be regarded as metaphors for the texture of the social fabric continuously driving his work. (Texte zur Kunst)
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