Erik Schmidt
05 Oct - 30 Dec 2012
ERIK SCHMIDT
Downtown
5 October - 30 December 2012
Schmidt works with drawing, painting and video performance. He uses photographs that he takes himself as the starting point of his works. The exhibition spans his early comic-style drawings, paintings of urban spaces from the early 2000s and the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York of 2011-2012 as well as pickers on plantations in Israel and life under the particular conditions of botanic gardens in New York State. Moreover, Schmidt portrays two typical Occupy protesters in a video work, performing both of their parts. He demonstrates apparent understanding within ignorance in a video trilogy that conceives the existence of homosexual artists as both integrated and at the same time ostracised. In each case Schmidt incorporates the existential subject-matter of his art by undergoing and suffering experiences he goes on to share with his contemporary audience by means of abstraction in painting, drawing and performance.
Erik Schmidt studied painting and illustration in Hamburg from 1992 to 1997. He continued his studies at the UdK in Berlin from 1998 to 2000. In 2002 he received a stipend for a period of residence in Weimar. In 2006 he held a residency at La Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Since 2000 the Berlin-based artist has had international exhibitions. After various working visits to New York he was invited by Jan Hoet to hold a first major solo exhibition at Museum Marta Herford in 2007.
The exhibition presents Erik Schmidt in a Berlin institution for the first time. In the spring of 2013 the show will travel to Leopold-Hoesch-Museum in Düren, North Rhine-Westphalia. During the set up period of 10 September 2012 to 4 October 2012, the house is open to the public.
Downtown
5 October - 30 December 2012
Schmidt works with drawing, painting and video performance. He uses photographs that he takes himself as the starting point of his works. The exhibition spans his early comic-style drawings, paintings of urban spaces from the early 2000s and the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York of 2011-2012 as well as pickers on plantations in Israel and life under the particular conditions of botanic gardens in New York State. Moreover, Schmidt portrays two typical Occupy protesters in a video work, performing both of their parts. He demonstrates apparent understanding within ignorance in a video trilogy that conceives the existence of homosexual artists as both integrated and at the same time ostracised. In each case Schmidt incorporates the existential subject-matter of his art by undergoing and suffering experiences he goes on to share with his contemporary audience by means of abstraction in painting, drawing and performance.
Erik Schmidt studied painting and illustration in Hamburg from 1992 to 1997. He continued his studies at the UdK in Berlin from 1998 to 2000. In 2002 he received a stipend for a period of residence in Weimar. In 2006 he held a residency at La Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Since 2000 the Berlin-based artist has had international exhibitions. After various working visits to New York he was invited by Jan Hoet to hold a first major solo exhibition at Museum Marta Herford in 2007.
The exhibition presents Erik Schmidt in a Berlin institution for the first time. In the spring of 2013 the show will travel to Leopold-Hoesch-Museum in Düren, North Rhine-Westphalia. During the set up period of 10 September 2012 to 4 October 2012, the house is open to the public.