Tönis Käo

Shape = Norm The Photographic Work

February 7th - April 25th, 2010

In his first exhibition in Neuenhaus, 70-year-old Tönis Käo presents a selection of his photographic work at the Kunstverein Grafschaft-Bentheim - a fascinating look into the archives of both an industrial designer and former professor of Industrial Design at the University of Wuppertal.  Käo is known, among other things, for the first button phone, which he designed for the German Federal Post Office in 1969, and for the Siemens mobile phone of 1980.  However, the numerous photographs of high artistic merit that he created over the course of his life are almost completely unknown.

Kunstverein Grafschaft-Bentheim's dedication to presenting the work of those who work in art-related positions, as shown in the previous exhibitions of Barbara Klemm (1999, photojournalism) and Gisela Scheidler (1998, theatrical photography), is once again evident in Tönis Käo's show entitled "Shape = NORM."  The exhibition of only analog, black-and-white photographs reveals Käo's style and how his formal and aesthetic decisions as an artist have always flowed into his work as a designer.

An 80-page exhibition catalogue has been published, and includes a text by Gerda Breuer.

As part of this program, slideshows of Tönis Käo were presented on February 19th at 8:00 pm:  amaNdebele - Painting from South Africa. 
On April 25th at 6:00 pm:  Who makes the globalization machine?

30 May to 24 August 2014: "Tönis Käo, Design as Experiment". Retrospective exhibition at the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design, Tallinn (Estonia), with accompanying catalogue.

22 January to 3 April 2016,  Red Dot Museum Essen Tõnis Käo: "Design as Experiment", retrospective http://de.red-dot.org/5638.html

Tönis Käo died on 03 July 2016 in Munich.