Tobias Rehberger
Tobias Rehberger, born 1966 in Esslingen, Germany, lives and works in Frankfurt. Known for his boundary-blurring work that merges art, design, architecture, and everyday objects, Rehberger gained recognition in the 1990s for creating environments and installations that challenge conventional ideas of functionality and aesthetics. His works often involve collaboration, appropriation, and playful disorientation – such as his signature use of dazzle camouflage patterns, which disrupt perception and space. By questioning authorship, utility, and context, Rehberger’s art explores how meaning is shaped not only by what we see, but also by how and where we encounter it.
Tobias Rehberger Editions
Unique Works
On Otto
2009
Series of 10 digital pigment prints (Ditone) on photo rag paper, 100 x 70 cm (39½ x 27½ in) each. Edition of 30, each signed and numbered.
This edition series consists of 10 prints, conceived as movie posters for Tobias Rehberger's experimental film project, On Otto, which the artist first presented at Fondazione Prada in 2007. For this project, Rehberger broke down the conventional filmmaking process into ten main working steps and then reversing their chronological order. The film was thus procuded backwards, starting with the movie posters and ending with the script. In keeping with this approach, the posters were also released only after the premiere, with each advertising only one aspect of the film, such as cast, cinematography, costume design, script, sound, storyboard, or titles.
Set EUR 9,000
Weghängung I-V
2001
Laser cut acrylic glass, polyurethane, wood, approx. 42 x 42 x 40 cm (16½ x 16½ x 15¾ in). Edition of 12, signed and numbered.
Tobias Rehberger’s edition Weghängung I–V is a sculptural work that exemplifies his ongoing exploration of form, material, and perception. Composed of laser-cut acrylic glass sections embedded in a soft, amorphous polyurethane base, the piece balances between the industrially precise and the organically irregular. The translucent, wavy acrylic slices create a visual rhythm, intersecting the opaque, dough-like mass in a way that feels both analytical and absurd. As with much of Rehberger’s work, Weghängung I–V resists straightforward interpretation, instead inviting viewers to question conventional hierarchies of material, function, and form in contemporary sculpture.
This work is part of the Contemporary Art Collection of the Federal Republic of Germany.
EUR 1,200
Spy
2019
Created on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the furniture company Thonet.
Wood, glue, stain, electrical fixture, bulb and cord, 53 × 59 × 53 cm (21 x 23 x 21 in). Unique.
For his contribution to the Thonet Re-Imagined project, Tobias Rehberger draws on the iconic features of the classic Coffee House Chair No. 14, reinterpreting them in an exaggerated and unexpected form as a lamp. The elegant curves of the chair’s backrest are transformed into a free-flowing loop of bentwood – though in reality, the loop is not bent at all, but meticulously assembled from numerous CNC-milled components. What appears at first glance to be a playful homage to handcrafted design is in fact the result of a highly technological production process, one that departs entirely from traditional bentwood techniques.
