Coming soon:
PUBLIC DISCUSSION: Sterberaum
, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
28.01.2012 18:00
Finissage, guided tour with Veit Loers and short lecture of
Ingo Niermann: Grab aller Menschen?
Gregor Schneider is present.
Ingo Niermann (*1969 in Bielefeld) is a german writer, journalist and artist.
Publications (selection): Der Effekt (2001), Minusvisionen (2003), Umbauland (2006).
New catalog:
Punto Muerto, Gregor Schneider, CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid 2012
Current exhibitions:
Stadt und Land, Konrad Fischer Galerie, Düsseldorf, Germany
20.01.2012 - 10.03.2012
Utopie Gesamtkunstwerk, Belvedere, Wien, Austria, Curator: Bettina Steinbrügge, Harald Krejci
20.01.2012 - 20.05.2012
Sterberaum, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria, Curator: Veit Loers (Solo)
19.11.2011 - 28.01.2012
Photos: © Gregor Schneider / VG Bild-Kunst Bonn
Press release
I want to show a person who dies a natural death, or has just died a natural death. My goal is to show the beauty of death.
This statement from an interview with the artist in Paris, February 2008, taken out of context, led to angry protests at the time, but also to professions of sympathy, especially in the German press. The artist even received death threats. Yet nobody has ever seen this dying room. Now it is being shown for the first time in Innsbruck.
In the interview given to Heinz-Norbert Jock (Kunstforum International 2008), Gregor Schneider describes at length the make-up of the art room constructed: I've built a dying room that for me as a sculptor is the actual work of art. But it can also be used as just that, a room to die in. It replicates a room at the Museum Haus Lange/Esters (Krefeld), which in my eyes is one of the most sensitive and artistically challenging rooms that contemporary art has at its disposal. The room is a living room, awash with light, with large windows and a wooden floor. Conceived by Mies van der Rohe, it is an expression of spatial freedom for me ... The art room provides the dignity required so as to make dying and death visible also in public.
Art, for me, has a deeply human ambition, in the most positive sense. Dying too can be art. Basically, a dying room is a personal design commission for the room and the environment we die in, we dissolve in, then to be dead. A design commission that lies in store for each of us.
The public depiction can free death from its social taboo. Is it possible to make dying and death a positive experience in analogy to birth?
Schneider, born in Rheydt (Mönchengladbach) in 1969, made a name for himself fifteen years ago with his Totes Haus ur, a late nineteenth-century terrace house in which the artist, over many years, created nightmarish suites of rooms, that initially were shown in various museums and then, in their entirety, were transplanted to the German Pavilion at the 49th Venice Biennale (2001). For the installation Schneider received the Golden Lion. Since then, he has realised numerous projects internationally, including the CUBE planned for St. Mark's Square in Venice, a replica of the Kaaba in Mecca at the Kunsthalle Hamburg, the labyrinth of rooms called Weisse Folter (lit. White Torture) at the K21 of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf , the Cells at Bondi Beach in Sydney, END at the Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach, and most recently it's all Rheydt for the Durga Puja Festival in Kolkata.
To coincide with the dying room being shown at Kunstraum Innsbruck, Gregor Schneider's newest project Punto Muerto (Dead End) will be presented at the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo C2M in Madrid, where a monumental, intestine-like system of pipes with individual ur rooms pervades the museum, without visitors setting foot in the latter.
Gregor Schneider will be present at the press conference, at 2 p.m., on November 19.
A documentary catalogue to go with the exhibition will appear in the new year.
The picture in the invitation of the exhibition shows the work "WAND" from his first museum´s exhibition in the Museum Haus Lange/Esters [Krefeld] u60, WAND, wall in front of a wall, breeze blocks and plaster blocks, plastering, white (272 x 259cm), DREI ARBEITEN, Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, 4.09.1994 - 23.10.1994 © Volker Döhne / Museum Haus Lange.
Project Space
Kunstraum Innsbruck artist multiples: Daniel Egg, Eva Kotatkova, Gregor Schneider, Corinne Wasmuht und Thomas Zipp
19.11.11 – 28.01.2012
Dates
Thu 08.12, 6 p.m. Private tour and lecture with Veit Loers: Those Ghosts: Das Memento Mori der Gegenwart als Wiederkehr des Unheimlichen
Sat 28.01.2012, 6 p.m. Finissage, private tour with Veit Loers and a short lecture by Ingo Niermann: Grab aller Menschen? Gregor Schneider will be present.
Next Exhibition
Martin Soto Climent
Pressetext
Ich möchte eine Person zeigen, welche eines natürlichen Todes stirbt oder gerade eines natürlichen Todes gestorben ist. Dabei ist mein Ziel, die Schönheit des Todes zu zeigen.
Diese aus dem Kontext gerissene Feststellung aus Anlass eines Interviews in Paris im Februar 2008 löste vor 3 Jahren wütende Proteste, aber auch Sympathiebezeugungen vor allem in der deutschen Presse aus.
Gregor Schneider erhielt sogar Morddrohungen. Dabei hat niemand jemals diesen Sterberaum gesehen. Nun wird er erstmals in Innsbruck gezeigt.
Schneider beschreibt im Interview mit Heinz-Norbert Jocks (Kunstforum International 2008) ausführlich das Aussehen des gebauten Kunstraums: Ich habe einen Sterberaum gebaut, der für mich als Bildhauer das eigentliche Kunstwerk ist. Doch dieser kann auch als solcher genutzt werden. Er ist ein Nachbau eines Raums aus dem Museum Haus Lange/Esters [Krefeld], der in meinen Augen einer der empfindsamsten und künstlerisch anspruchvollsten ist, die wir für die Gegenwartskunst als Museumsbau haben. Es handelt sich dabei um einen von Licht durchfluteten Wohnraum mit großen Fenstern und Holzboden. Von Mies van der Rohe konzipiert, ist er für mich ein Ausdruck von räumlicher Freiheit… Der Kunstraum kann die nötige Würde schaffen um das Sterben und den Tod auch öffentlich sichtbar zu machen.
Kunst hat für mich einen zutiefst im positiven Sinne humanen Anspruch. Sterben kann auch Kunst sein. Im Grunde ist ein Sterberaum ein persönlicher Gestaltungsauftrag für den Raum und die Umgebung, in der wir sterben uns auflösen um dann Tod zu sein. Eine Gestaltungsaufgabe die jedem Menschen bevorsteht.
Die öffentliche Darstellung kann den Tod aus dem gesellschaftlichen Tabu führen. Ist es vorstellbar das sterben und den Tod ähnlich der Geburt eines Menschen, zu einem positiven Erlebnis werden lassen?
Schneider, 1969 in Rheydt (Mönchengladbach) geboren, ist vor 15 Jahren durch sein Totes Haus ur bekannt geworden, ein gründerzeitliches Reihenhaus, in dem Schneider über viele Jahre hinweg alptraumhafte Raumfolgen schuf, die zunächst in verschiedenen Museen zu sehen waren und dann in ihrer Gesamtheit in den Deutschen Pavillon der 49. Biennale von Venedig (2001) verpflanzt wurden. Gregor Schneider erhielt dafür den „Goldenen Löwen“. Seitdem hat er international zahlreiche Projekte verwirklicht, den für den Markusplatz in Venedig geplanten Cube, eine Replik der Kaaba in Mekka, die an der Kunsthalle Hamburg verwirklicht wurde, das Raumlabyrinth Weisse Folter in der K21 der Kunstsammlungen Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf, die Cells des Bondy-Beachs bei Sydney, END am und im Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach und kürzlich it’s all Rheydt für das Durga Puja Festival in Kolkata.
Parallel zum Sterberaum wird im Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo C2M Madrid Gregor Schneiders neues Projekt Punto Muerto (Dead End) gezeigt. Ein gewaltiges darmartiges Röhrensystem mit einzelnen ur-Räumen durchzieht von außen das Museum, durch die der Besucher auch den Ausgang finden muss, ohne das Museum zu betreten.
Gregor Schneider wird zur Pressekonferenz am 19. November, 14 Uhr, anwesend sein.
Zur Ausstellung erscheint im Neuen Jahr ein dokumentarischer Katalog.
Das Foto der Einladungskarte zeigt die Arbeit "WAND" aus seiner ersten Museumsausstellung im Museum Haus Lange/Esters [Krefeld]: u60, WAND, wall in front of a wall, breeze blocks and plaster blocks, plastering, white (272 x 259cm), DREI ARBEITEN, Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, 4.09.1994 - 23.10.1994 © Volker Döhne / Museum Haus Lange.
Projektraum
Jahresgaben Kunstraum Innsbruck:
Daniel Egg, Eva Kotatkova, Gregor Schneider, Corinne Wasmuht und Thomas Zipp
19.11.11 – 28.01.2012
Termine
Do 08.12.2011, 18:00 Uhr
Führung und Lesung
Veit Loers: Those Ghosts: Das Memento Mori der Gegenwart als Wiederkehr des Unheimlichen
Sa 28.01.2012, 18:00 Uhr
Finissage
Führung durch die Ausstellungen mit Veit Loers
Anschließend Kurzvortrag von Ingo Niermann (Autor des Buches "Umbauland", Berlin, 2006): Grab aller Menschen?
Gregor Schneider ist anwesend.
Nächste Ausstellung
Martin Soto Climent
Punto Muerto, Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo, Madrid, Spain, Curator: Veit Loers (Solo)
28.10.2011 - 26.02.2012
Photos: © Gregor Schneider / VG Bild-Kunst Bonn
Press release
Gregor Schneider is one of the most important German conceptual artists of his generation as well as a noted sculptor. The piece he presented at the German Pavilion in 2001 at the 49th Venice Biennale, entitled Totes Haus ur [Dead House ur], travelled around the world and was awarded the Golden Lion. The CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo is pleased to present, for the first time ever in Spain, a major individual exhibition dedicated to a new project by this fascinating artist.
The Totes Haus ur, an old tenement house, is located in Rheydt, a borough south of the city of Mönchengladbach in the Lower Rhine region (near Düsseldorf and Cologne). Gregor Schneider was born there in 1969 and still lives and works there today. In 1985 he began to fill the building with a series of rooms that lent it an air of mystery. By doubling the number of walls and windows and adding new spaces, he eliminated the rooms’ original function and created new places, in part with the corresponding furniture. He then assigned familiar functions to these new, alien spaces: for Gregor Schneider, the living room, bedroom, storage room, kitchen, hallway, guest room and basement do not represent environments but spaces delimited by walls whose functions have been predetermined for generations, membranes behind which disturbing things can happen (Ulrich Loock, 1995). Through his artistic intervention, Schneider gives them a new image, in which the concept of death is implied by concepts such as the mould or the replica. However familiar they may seem, Schneider’s rooms are spatial creations as unreal as they are mysterious. Like the found footage used in video art, Gregor Schneider’s rooms are copied, so to speak, from the real world and transferred to the fictional reality of art. This could explain why Gregor Schneider’s name appeared in international press headlines in 2008, when he presented his idea (as yet unrealised) of exhibiting a room with a dying patient inside.
Since 1997, when the artist began sending the rooms of his Totes Haus ur to exhibitions and selling them to collections, Schneider has developed new spatial ideas for outdoor contexts, such as the street section he showed at the Hamburger Kunsthalle (Hannelore Reuen, 2003), the “Schneider family’s” two semi-detached homes at Artangel in London (2004), the cube imitating the Kaaba designed for St. Mark’s Square in Venice, where it was vetoed, although it was eventually displayed at the Hamburger Kunsthalle in 2007, and the Weisse Folter (White Torture) series at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf (2007). That same year, Schneider also produced the 21 cells for Bondi Beach, on the east coast of Australia, and in 2008 he presented his project entitled END at the Städtischen Museum Mönchengladbach. More recently, in September 2011 Gregor Schneider began building an Indian version of the Totes Haus ur for the Durga Puja Festival in Kolkata.
At the CA2M, Schneider will conduct a thematic exploration of how a traditional house in the town of Móstoles was transformed into the modern museum we see today. Visitors will practically be sucked into a vast labyrinth of pipes extending throughout the entire centre without having stepped foot inside. The idea of the rooms is transferred to hallways and corridors, taking visitors into unusual spatial complexes with film projections, photographs and sculptures. As in all of Gregor Schneider’s works, it will seem as though the complex had been there from the very beginning.
PUBLICATIONS
A bilingual exhibition catalogue will be published, featuring texts by Veit Loers, Ulrich Loock, David Moriente and Ory Desau, as well as extensive graphic documentation of the installation. The catalogue will be the first Spanish publication ever dedicated to this artist.
minimal and beyond, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany, Curator: Dr. Brigitte Kölle
22.10.2011 - 24.06.2012
DEAD_LINES? Todesbilder in Kunst-Medien-Alltag, Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal, Germany, Curator: Birgit Richard, Oliver Zybok
16.10.2011 - 14.02.2012
Past exhibition:
it's all Rheydt, Kolkata, India (Solo)
1.10.2011 - 8.10.2011
More info: http://www.goethe.de/ins/in/kol/kue/bku/iar/enindex.htm
Photos: © Gregor Schneider / VG Bild-Kunst Bonn
Photo: © Robert Bückmann