Prof. Michael Stevenson is taking part in the group exhibition Gifts of Friendship, which opens on 15 May at the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź. 

He has been head of the Class for Sculpting at the AdBK Nuremberg since 2011.

Gifts of Friendship presents nearly 150 works donated to the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź collection in 2024–26 by eighty artists from dozens of countries. Their gesture allows us to reflect on the significance of artist solidarity in the modern world and the relations between the art scene and the public museum. It emphasizes the role of trust, friendship, and community based on long-term collaboration as forces shaping the institutional collection.

Michael Stevenson’s work Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle combines a street fixture, a bicycle rack, with casual embellishments, to create something of a three-dimensional meme.

The evangelical fish symbol, a customization seen perhaps most often on an automobile’s rear bodywork, becomes a physical armature to secure a bike and, the works point of departure.

Over decades this symbol has ping-ponged amongst claims of both faith, and science, highlighting diverse communities and contrary world-views. This process of memeification continues as Stevenson’s fish gains function––legs––along with a sense of forward locomotion, and shoes befitting a prank of unknown yet clownish proportions.

Inside its open tailpipe is a further update, a tiny, tiny concealed screen, its format reminiscent of an endoscopic camera-view turning the work into a diagnostic tool for further observation and scrutiny. 
 

Gifts of Friendship
From 15 May 2026
Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź