STEFAN SAGMEISTER

Thomas Erben is thrilled to present his second exhibition with Stefan Sagmeister, a designer (b. 1962, Bregenz, Austria) whose transdisciplinary practice has been the subject of major institutional exhibitions since he founded Sagmeister, Inc. in 1993.

Most known for his album covers including for The Rolling Stones, Lou Reed or The Talking Heads, his wider work has sprung from a level of self reflection and philosophical inquiry unusual in his field. Projects like The Happy Show, 2012 (ICA Philadelphia, traveling), Beauty, 2019 (Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt, and MAK, Vienna) or Now is Better, which premiered at the gallery in 2021, exemplify his cross-over position as a designer, typographer and artist.

The exhibition focuses on posters using his likeness, an impulse stemming from Sagmeister’s desire—as a young designer emerging in the early ‘90s—to disrupt the sterility of modernism’s emphasis on form and function. However, it also recalls Austrian art’s long tradition of the body as a site of psychological investigation and radical social critique, exemplified by the work of Egon Schiele, the Vienna Actionists, Maria Lassnig or Vallie Export.

In the text accompanying the exhibition, aesthetic philosopher Keren Moscovitch elaborates:

“While his strategies are subversive, Sagmeister is less interested in ‘pushing against’, and more driven to ‘pull along’ in gestures that operate like infectious laughter. More than publicity stunts, Sagmeister’s performances show that the self is always complicit, always involved, and always undergoing a process of evolution. He draws from the Fluxus vocabulary of conflating ‘art’ and ‘life’, through which fluid, creative subjectivity endures an ever present process of transformation in concert with the groundedness of the physical body.

Throughout his career, Sagmeister has sought to bring design to the people in ways that enhance their experience of life rather than merely sell them products. The exhibition features collaborative posters that serve as portraits of friendships, and reveal the pleasures that can be found in making and thinking in community. Operating from a politics of generosity, and by bringing a deeply personal element into his designs, Sagmeister’s projects facilitate participation, empathy and joy.” — Stefan Sagmeister graduated in 1986 from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna (MAK), a breeding ground for the Wiener Werkstätte and its philosophy of the Gesamtkunstwerk. As a Fulbright Scholar, he then studied at the Pratt Institute, New York, receiving an MFA in 1988.

In addition to the aforementioned exhibitions, his work was shown in such venues as Museo Maz, Guadalajara, Mexico, and in Kiev, Ukraine (both 2025); A4 Art Museum, Chengdu, and K11 Museum, Shanghai (both 2024); Udem, Monterrey, Mexico (2023); Vorarlberg Museum, Bregenz, Austria, and Museo Franz Mayer, Mexico City (both 2022); Maat, Lisbon (2018); Museum of Vancouver (2015); Chicago Cultural Center; Jewish Museum, New York (both 2013); Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2010); Deitch Projects, New York (2008); Wolfsonian, Miami (2007); and Zero One Design Center, Seoul (2004), to name a few.

His work is in the collections of MoMA, New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, SFMoMA, as well as many other international institutions.