Diet Sayler: For a Random Structuring of Space

The Parkour series introduces themes, concepts and seminal encounters for the activity of outstanding artists in the field of visual and performative arts in Romania, which enabled them to produce an unparalleled body of work. The series looks at a limited array of artistic projects and experiences, through the use of interview as an unmediated recording instrument. The interview format accommodates the reader with the particular spatial and material conditions of their practice, with the personal beliefs and the ongoing process of conceptualising their work. Parkour thereby distill significant aspects of the recent cultural history, bringing back to the fore the role of memory in capturing the kernel of an artistic time, of an artwork, of a conceptual turn. 

Diet Sayler was born in 1939 at Timişoara and has lived in Nuremberg since 1973. He is one of the leading figures of the Romanian artistic Neo avant - garde of the 1960s–1970s. Within this time period, he settled on a visual language deeply rooted in mathematics, architecture, movement, seriality and music, subjects which have been of an unceasing concern to him. Sensitive to the principles of constructivism and the synthetic theories of geometric abstraction, Diet Sayler has strived to develop an aesthetic of the “rigor,” translated in an operational system based on the dialectic of contrasts and on the introduction of a new constant: chance. His early series of works include Monotypes (1963–1967), Arhythmical Compositions I–XII (1968–1969), Serial Compositions (1971–1972). The Kinetic Rooms he created at the Technical Club in Piteşti (1971–1972) illustrate his concern with the dynamics of structures, subsequently integrated in an urban or natural environment. His spatial installations Five Wooden Bars (1976–1988) or the series of Norigrammes (1997–1998) reflect his endeavour to “sculpture” the air, to permute the elements in relation to their surroundings, surprising the viewer with their presence in unexpected places, with unsuspected poetical meanings. In parallel, Diet Sayler has carried out a significant academic and theoretical activity as Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg from 1992 to 2005.

Publication concept and editors: Alina Şerban & Ştefania Ferchedău
Proofreading: Alina Ioan
Translation: Claudia Lie
Design: Radu Manelici
Image processing: Aurelian Ardeleanu

Institute of the Present, 2019
English, Romanian 
Softcover
156mm x 229mm