Lecture date: 2015-10-30
Art and Architecture: rooms, buildings, peninsulas
Gregor Schneider is a pioneer of built art rooms and one of the most important German artists of his generation. Since 1985 Schneider has been working on the house on Unterheydener Straße in Mönchengladbach-Rheydt. He replicated existing rooms by building rooms in their entirety within other rooms. These double rooms are not visible as rooms within rooms to the viewer. Using machinery he also moves elements of the rooms out of sight. This results in hollows and inter- spaces. Some rooms become inaccessible, because they are hidden behind walls and some have been isolated using concrete, plumbing, insulation or sound absorbing materials. Different times of day have also been simulated.
In 2001, he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for his work Totes Haus u r exhibited at the German Pavilion.
There has been much controversy around his ideas for a dying room. Death and dying are an important part of his work and visitors are thrown back on themselves, confronted with their own fears.
Gregor Schneider will speak about his artistic vision of a Gesamtkunstwerk.
Bio: From 1999 to 2003, he was guest professor at several art schools including De Ateliers in Amsterdam, the Academy of Fine Arts Hamburg and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen. He has been nominated professor of sculpture at the University of Art Berlin in 2009 and since 2012 at the Akademie of fine art Munich. He is a member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts.
