BIO

Michael Wiemeyer is a Brooklyn-based collage artist and graphic designer. Born in Germany, he developed an early interest in assembling unexpected visual elements—an approach that continues to inform his collage practice today.

Wiemeyer studied design and visual communications in Düsseldorf before relocating to New York City, where he co-founded the graphic design studio Designlounge in 2002. From 2004 to 2019, he taught design and typography at Parsons School of Design and was nominated for a Distinguished Teacher Award. In the early 2000s, he immersed himself for six years in various forms of printmaking at the Art Students League of New York, exhibiting work annually in the League’s public gallery. Several of his prints were included in limited edition portfolios that have become part collections at the New York Public library and the Art Students League.

Collage-making has been an important outlet for experimentation. Guided by intuitive responses to shapes, letterforms, textures, and color, Wiemeyer creates collages ranging from small-scale works to large-format compositions using found and discarded materials alongside monoprints produced in his Brooklyn studio

ARTIST STATEMENT

My collage work often begins without a predetermined outcome. I gather found materials and printed matter, along with monoprints I create in my studio using acrylic paint. I peel at the edges of torn posters plastered on construction fences. I get excited by a specific color or texture, an irregular rip, a letter fragment, or a piece of dirt or distressed surface that can make the material more interesting. Back in the studio, I arrange these fragments and follow intuitive responses to shape, color, scale, and placement. The work often begins with a visual or conceptual spark, but its direction is shaped through the discovery of unexpected relationships between the materials.

Years of working as a graphic designer have sharpened my sensitivity to composition, proportion, and visual hierarchy, but collage allows me to work without the constraints of a brief or a prescribed message. Fragments are rearranged, layered, obscured, and revealed until a sense of coherence emerges. Often, it is only then that a meaning or a memory begins to surface. What interests me is the moment when disparate elements suddenly feel as though they belong together.