stefan roigk was born 1974 in bückeburg, germany. after finishing school he first studies VISUAL COMMUNICATION from 1996 to 1998 at the university of applied science in hanover, germany. from 1998 to 2001 he studied fine arts with a focus on SOUNDART and SCULPTURE under ulrich eller and dietrich klakow at the sculpture department of the university of applied science in hanover. in 2002 he successfully completed his studies in the MASTER-CLASS of ulrich eller.
since 2003, stefan roigk is living and working in berlin and bückeburg. after finishing the series UP in 2007 he is currently working on PARK, a new series of expansive sound installations.
artist statement. sound marks the white canvas with its incomprehensible signs and ornaments. from the area into the room. scetches of three-dimensional structures and matters. while the objects have no temporal changes, the sonic-gestures complete the environment with movements and fading colors. nevertheless, with their characteristics like form, color, surface, volume, duration etc. each element builds an equal part of this communication. the concrete and artificial shares arrange the abstract structures to a vague conjecture of an autistic world.
oliver jelinski. THE COURSE OF NOTHINGNESS. (excerpt)
[...] Roigk’s works do not celebrate the subject. Not the “incubus of materialistic views which has made a cruel and pointless game of the universe’s life†(Wassily Kandinsky, Über das Geistige in der Kunst, Bern, 1952, P.22) is to be fought, but the impossibility of using life’s material foundations appropriately to satisfy people’s needs, a state owing itself to the structural laws of the bourgeois society: not only the economic crisis and the war, but the structures bringing these out over and over again causing the dissatisfaction of the subject, that everyday suffering. The void is real, but not pleasing.
Therefore the works of Stefan Roigk do not offer the opportunity to their observer, to establish himself in or feel at home around them. Though the works are to be understood in their construction, they are not destined for the subject. [...]
[...] Yet the objects are nothing, when not received. The subject experiences that it cannot realize itself around them, because they seem to act against him. “You have no business here†they say and destroy all possible meaningfulness, the bourgeois subject wants to find in the world, showing that there is nothing to be found in the here and now. Therefore they reveal the experience of poverty of all reasonable experience, being the unrelenting negation of the meaningfulness of the appearance of that which exists, which alone – realised as a determinate negation of that which exists itself – could lead to something positive.
kerstin stakemeier. COMMENTARY. „Commentary and Translation relate to text as stile and mimesis to nature: the same phenomenon under different perspectives.“(Walter Benjamin, Einbahnstraße, In: Ders., Gesammelte Schriften, IV.1, 92.)
In Roigk’s non-organic works no nature appears, no utopism wins ground in colour or form. As commentaries on a world, they are translations of sound. They behave mimetically to it, not to the world in which the objects appear. In his installations an aseptic sterility conquers the room and proposes new self-comportment in it. The combination of drawings and objects, of score and instrument, delineates an experience which searches for sideways, which rests within the present but refuses its everyday experience. The bodily, which in the capitalist present and in the dystopian future seems to be a necessary hindrance of (re)production, relocates its residence in Roigk’s works. His objects do not search for a somehow lost authenticity in bodily expressions, or reach for attempts to bring back a lost nature but shift the bodily perception onto bodiless sound volumes Those sound volumes here become objectively reachable and appear, as in UP5OUT (2003) as alienated fragments of everyday life, as rucksacks or walker frames. The objects imply a use value, though they lead to no purpose, but instead back to sound. The scores, which Roigk since 2003 has been increasingly fusing with his objects in production and in exhibition practice, functional as construction manuals in this word of parallel experience. Where the objects populate the walls and floors of spaces like some out of place objects of utility, the score adds the construction manual. A manual in which the volumes of sounds are translated into the volumes of pencil drawings and suggest an understandability that does not exist but for themselves. Those drawn scores alter the music, which in this notation is alphabetized anew. Notation as translation, not as settlement. (from SOUNDBODIES. on the grammar of acoustic experience in the works of stefan roigk.)sponsorships. scholarships. FUNDING for the filmproject FAMILY COMPOSER by the cultural office of the city hanover. project oriented SCHOLARSHIP for fine arts by the federal state of lower saxony. ANNUAL SCHOLARSHIP for fine arts by the federal state of lower saxony. THALES Prize as part of NORDWESTKUNST by the kunsthalle wilhelmshaven.solo exhibitions. 2002. GREY MATTER 02. spandau projekt. hanover. 2003. UP.TO. ausland. berlin. 2004. UP.ON. hinterconti. hamburg. UP.DATE. kunstverein wolfenbüttel. wolfenbüttel. UP.ROAR. prima kunst. kiel. 2005. UP.SEPT.IC. christian ehrentraut. berlin. 2006. UP.AT 6ES AND 7S. e-complice. berlin. NORDWESTKUNST 2005. die preisträger. kunsthalle wilhelmshaven. wilhelmshaven. PARKPLATZ junge kunst. wolfsburg.group exhibitions (selected). 1995. SYNTHETISCHE TRÄUME AUS WIRKLICHKEIT. stella. minden 1998. DREI ESSEN KLANG. performance. herrenhäuser garten. hanover. GEMUSST. university of applied sciences and arts. hanover. 2001. MANCHMAL WURDE VIEL GEPLAUDERT. kunsthalle. hanover. SKINNY BAG LABORATORIES. unfriendly takeover. central station. frankfurt. 2002. HAMMELSPRUNG. niedersächsischer landtag. hanover. ABFAHRT. ihme-zentrum. hanover. MEISTERSCHÜLER 2002. nord/lb art. hanover. 2003. COMMON GROUND 3. performance. niedersächsische landtagsvertretung. berlin. YELLOW PAGES. kunsthalle palazzo. liesthal. switzerland. turm-galerie. helmstedt. INDETERMINATE KOMMUNSIMUS. moussonturm. frankfurt. 2004. WHITE CUBE | BLACK BOXES. garage. strahlsund. NOTATIONSVERSCHIEBUNGEN. zentralbuero. berlin. 2005. NORDWESTKUNST. kunsthalle wilhelmshaven. wilhelmshaven. PREVIEW. the emerging art fair. backfabrik. berlin. PLATTFORM 2. LOVELY SHANGHAI MUSIC. kunstverein hannover. hannover. 2006. SONAMBIENTE 2006. akademie der künste. berlin. HEIMSPIEL. 83. HERBSTAUSSTELLUNG. kunstverein hannover. LOVELY SHANGHAI MUSIC. zendai museum of modern art. shanghai. china. APPARATUS. program. berlin. RIO. artnews projects. berlin. 2007. SWAB. barcelona. spanien. INFILTRATION AND SOUND(E)SCAPE. galeria senda. barcelona. spanien. BLACK OUT. kuttner siebert. berlin. STUDIO. huchentoot. berlin.catalogues (selection). GEMUSST. 1998. university of applied sciences and arts. hanover. NEID 10. 2004. special edition for the 3rd berlin bienale. artist magazine. b books. berlin. NORDWESTKUNST 2005. kunsthalle wilhelmshaven. SONAMBIENTE 2006. akademie der künste. kehrer verlag heidelberg. STEFAN ROIGK. PARKANLAGE. 2006. junge kunst. wolfsburg. christian ehrentraut. berlin.
discography (selected). JIMMY CURSOR. THE ULTIMATE HIT SLUT. 2000. cdr. undo music. KEI;M. FOR SOUND=RND(0)*2:NEXT STEP KEIM. 2000. cdr. 'bru:t. BLUE MESK. 2000. cd. welt am draht. SUPER BEEP BROTHERS. 2001. cdr. undo music. HÄNGENDE FLÄCHEN. cdr. 2005. 'bru:t. KEI;M VS NO. UNTITLED. 1997. mc. no-rekords. DIE LEGENDE DES ZWIEBELTIERES. 1998. cdr. 'bru:t. DIE LEGENDE DES ZWIEBELTIERES. 1998. mc. no-rekords. KEI;M/Y-TON-G/NO. DEKADENZ UND MUSTARD. 1998. mc. no-rekords. STEFAN ROIGK. UPRISING. 2007. 12 inch. tochnit aleph. VARIOUS ARTISTS. AS. 2003. benjamin green presents. 2cdr. resonance fm. WC-CENTER. PERSONALDUSCHRAUM. 2003. cdr. undu music.
