Martin Fengel and Bernd Zimmer’s Mobil 100 is a visual puzzlement. Juxtaposing snapshot-style photographs (Fengel’s) and a variety of paper-based work (Zimmer’s), the book is a candid collaboration, hanging together on coincidence and surprise. The combination of work was created blindly, neither artist seeing the work of the other as the pieces were created on a daily basis. As a whole, the result offers little informational content, but the unintentional alignments of subject matter, composition, or color palette manages to keep the reader playfully engaged.



Landscapes, desktops, and individuals caught in awkward poses mingle with abstract colorscapes and crudely-rendered figures of people and animals. Connection, coordination, repetition, and humor all serve as subtle points of entry, while the burden of meaning falls to the reader. The small size of the book instills the sense that one is not intended to progress page-by-page, slowly and solemnly. Instead, this is the kind of piece one takes to a lunch or travels with, reading it against a shifting background, flipping through its pages in exchange with others.




Like the collaboration that created it, Mobil 100 seems to work best as an iterative and shared experience, attended to casually but frequently. As one becomes more familiar with the images, an increased sense of concordance emerges. It is pleasant, too, to open the book among others and discover which images repeatedly attract attention. Fengel and Zimmer’s work is a useful reminder that creative work need neither be self-serious nor intentional in order to foster meaning. —Nicholas Chiarella