DOMINIK MERSCH GALLERY: GREGOR SCHNEIDER 'German Angst' by Dominik Mersch Gallery

Gregor Schneider ‘GERMAN ANGST’ 03.04 – 03.05.2014

DOMINIK MERSCH GALLERY is pleased to present GREGOR SCHNEIDER, ‘German Angst.’ Awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2001 for his infamous work ‘Totes Haus u r,’ exhibited at the German Pavilion, Schneider has earned a reputation as an outstanding artist and as the creator of an utterly baffling oeuvre. In 2007 Schneider built the confronting Kaldor Public Art Project, 21 beach cells, which created a dominating presence on Bondi Beach, Sydney. Schneider also installed 'Basement Keller Haus u r' 1985 - 2012 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The eleven-by-four-metre room shipped from Rheydt, was carefully inserted into the architectural fabric of the Gallery. A suite of photographs documenting 'Totes Haus u r' accompanies his work at the museum. The provocative artist is well known for the sensory aspects of his work. Since 1985 he has been rebuilding the interior spaces of his home in Mönchengladbach-Rheydt, Germany. As walls are removed or ceilings lowered, Schneider’s spatial incursions create a sense of claustrophobia. Such feelings of unease are heightened when the artist includes in the work lifeless, sculptural bodies covered in plastic or real people repeatedly performing everyday tasks. His work consistently features hollow rooms, haunting spaces and dark mausoleums. The original work ‘Haus u r’ 1985 –now, is the foundation for the building work that he produces for exhibition purposes. Schneider's fascination with darkened, asphyxiation rooms has become an art genre in itself. His work alludes gruesomely to sex, death and suffering. "One builds what one no longer knows", he states, and his work exemplifies the tricks that the human mind can play when stretched far beyond the normal. Schneider wants his work to help us to reflect upon and overcome our worst nightmares. That these fetid rooms have become highly sought after by collectors and museums certainly reveals how compelling we find the most disquieting aspects of the human condition. In 2008 Schneider became embroiled in controversy after saying he wanted to create a space in a museum in which people could die. His argument was that society's horror of death was so acute that we prefer to ignore it, leaving people to die in the clinical impersonality of a hospital rather than somewhere beautiful. His impassioned response reflected on the endemic cruelty in our society that leads us to blatantly disregard our final act. German Angst will be opened by John Kaldor who first introduced the artist to Australian audiences for the beach cells and commissioned him to the Kaldor Family Collection at Art Gallery NSW.

TOTES HAUS UR, 2001, German Pavilion 49t h Venice Biennale In 2001, Schneider was awarded the Golden Lion at the 49th Venice Biennale for TOTES HAUS u r, (Dead House u r) in the German Pavilion, relocating the entire interior of a two-story residential house inside the exhibition space in Venice.

This was an artistic work of an architectural scale. It responded to the avant-garde exhortation to leave the realms of the symbolic and to engage directly with social and political reality, but at the same time it undermines this exhortation in that it produces nothing other than what was already there, “I was interested in free- wheeling actions.” Gregor Schneider’s practice is different from that of the readymade, with his own hands he reproduces existing rooms in the same place and subsequently, for exhibition purposes, reconstructs these in another place. Thus he takes over and affirms an existing building, constantly seeking to make a connection with what it is not, with an uncanny deeper level that fundamentally questions the existential possibility of dwelling, of finding refuge in a house.

Gregor Schneider TOTES HAUS u r, Venice 2001, 24 rooms from developed and doubled rooms of the House u r, Rheydt 1985-2001, mixed media © Gregor Schneider / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

DIE FAMILIE SCHNEIDER, October - December 2004, 14 & 16 Walden Street, Whitechapel, London E1

In his first major project in the UK, Gregor Schneider constructed a new work, bringing his long-standing interest in repression, reproduction and repetition to a very ordinary street in London’s East End.

Die Familie Schneider took place in neighboring, identical houses – 14 and 16 Walden Street. The houses were open by appointment only and visitors – always two at a time – collected the front door keys from a small office on the same street. One visitor entered 14 Walden Street alone, whilst the other entered the neighboring house. After a period of ten minutes, the visitors emerged, exchanged keys and entered the second house. At no time was there ever more than one visitor in each house.

CUBE VENICE 2005, CUBE BERLIN 2006, CUBE HAMBURG 2007 In 2005, Gregor Schneider was officially invited to realize the CUBE VENICE 2005 at the Piazza di San Marco in Venice during the 2005 Biennale. The sculpture was rejected due to its "political nature”, intended to be an independent sculpture in form, function and appearance, inspired by the Kaaba in Mecca. The rejection at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin’s contemporary art museum housed in a former train station, came after Mr. Schneider had been invited to construct “Cube Berlin 2006” by the museum’s director, Eugen Blume. The general director of the State Museums of Berlin, Peter-Klaus Schuster, halted the work, even though the catalog, with Mr. Blume’s essay, was already at the printer. In 2007 the CUBE HAMBURG was realized in the courtyard of the Hamburger Kunsthalle. Under the artistic direction of the curator, Dr. Hubertus Gaßner, different aspects of a Malevich painting from 1878-1935 were analyzed in an exhibition entitled "The Black Square – Homage to Malevich". “Malevich himself wanted to build exactly this cube — for Lenin’s grave, actually,” said Mr. Gassner. “And without a doubt he would be thrilled to see Schneider’s box standing out there.”

21 BEACH CELLS Commissioned by Kaldor Art Projects (Project 16), Gregor Schneider transformed Sydney’s Bondi Beach in 2007 into a giant cage titled 21 beach cells. The 4 x 4 meter cells contained amenities for visitors – an air mattress, beach umbrella and black plastic garbage bag – and were soon inhabited by beachgoers looking for a site to rest and find shelter from the sun. The shadow image of Guantánamo Bay’s Camp X-Ray – and Australia’s own immigration detention centers – became a site for relaxation. 21 beach cells captured the atmosphere of the time, an environment of global terrorism, detention of immigrants and the Cronulla race riots, questioning Australia’s egalitarian self-image.

Art Gallery NSW, ‘BASEMENT KELLER Haus U r’, 1985 – 2012 John Kaldor Family Collection in collaboration with the Art Gallery of New South Wales

Commissioned for the contemporary international contemporary art collection at Art Gallery of NSW, Gregor Schneider created an eleven-by-four-metre room that has been shipped from Rheydt, Germany, and carefully inserted into the architectural fabric of the Gallery. A suite of photographs documenting Totes Haus u r accompanies his work.

â&#x20AC;&#x2122;HAUS u r, Rheydtâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, 1985, b/w print Agfa paper, 2/6, framed, 42 x 52 cm, $5,800