Kunstsammlungen am Theaterplatz
11. Dec 2025 – 12. Apr 2026

frank maibier. tritt tratt

Under the title frank maibier. tritt tritt, the extensive work of artist Frank Maibier is presented in a solo exhibition. The show brings together works from three decades and shows how consistently Maibier explores material, sound, and writing, repeatedly questioning familiar structures.

Frank Maibier (*1959) has been working with paper and sound as a self-taught artist since 1985. Starting with paper, he has expanded his artistic practice to include numerous materials over the years. He examines their structures and transfers the central characteristics of paper—fragility, lightness, and transparency—to other materials. Solid materials seem to visually merge into paper, while paper itself takes on organic qualities. Maibier’s focus is less on finished forms than on processes: breaking down structures, shifting material boundaries, and constant transformation. Recurring techniques such as folding, perforating, layering, and shifting create moments of tipping between stability and instability. This fragility refers to personal experiences as well as to social upheavals after 1990 and forms the basis of an individual aesthetic language.

The title tritt tritt is an onomatopoeic invention by the artist and is reminiscent of the sounds made when he bends metal grids or steps over them. Sounds and noises are a central component of his work. Years of engagement with poetry, poetic texts, and the rhythm of language have led to the creation of new words and mysterious characters that give rise to a unique linguistic cosmos. In this process, the functional role of language as a carrier of information recedes into the background. Instead, it serves as a field of experimentation from which Maibier extracts its pictorial character, varies it, and condenses it into new forms of communication.

Maibier has been working with Chemnitz-based musician Andreas Winkler (*1964) since 1995. Under the project title Kanaluntersuchung (Channel Investigation), the two explore experimental sound spaces that oscillate between improvisation, singing, and rhythm. Free jazz, electronica, techno, samba, rumba, and house combine with delicate and expressive sounds to form an emotional structure. Particularly striking are Maibier’s language-oriented songs, which do not originate from any known language and condense into haunting symbols. This creates complex overlays of different acoustic levels.

The presentation includes works on paper, drawings, sculptural objects, and large-scale installations. It showcases the diversity of Maibier’s artistic work and reveals how he works with materiality, light, optical illusions, dynamics, statics, and sound. The sound project Kanaluntersuchung (Sewer Investigation) is being presented in documentary form for the first time. It is complemented by a new sound installation and the mobile project elephant in the room, in which Maibier and Winkler travel through Europe with the sculpture of the elephant EWA and interact with people.

exhibition flyer

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