Kai Dreyer

I work with objects that have been used up. Before each one is photographed, it receives a single intervention: a system that belongs to a different class of things is applied to it. A banana peel is given a tally, as if someone had been keeping count. An emptied bottle of champagne, opened by sabre, is sealed in an evidence bag.

The intervention does not rescue anything. After the photograph, the object is thrown away like every other and its route continues undisturbed. Only the champagne bottle was kept, as evidence would be. What changes is the story of the object's use. Each work holds one, not visible at first glance, but there to be found by anyone who looks twice. The photograph is the only record.

Metamorphosis of Meaning is the archive of these stories. I trained as a designer at HfG Offenbach, the Offenbach University of Art and Design and have worked in branding and product design since. That background is in the work: I am interested in how little it takes for an object to say something else.

Pigment prints on Hahnemühle paper, editions of 33, signed, numbered and blind embossed. Based near Frankfurt.

Diploma in Design, HfG Offenbach, Germany, 2019