Andreas Schmitten
05 Sep - 25 Oct 2014
© Andreas Schmitten
„Graf-Adolf-Straße, Düsseldorf“, 2014
Paper, cardboard, plastic, cloth, wood, aluminium, rubber foam, wire, adaptor, light
Dimensions variable
Installation view Linn Lühn, Düsseldorf
„Graf-Adolf-Straße, Düsseldorf“, 2014
Paper, cardboard, plastic, cloth, wood, aluminium, rubber foam, wire, adaptor, light
Dimensions variable
Installation view Linn Lühn, Düsseldorf
ANDREAS SCHMITTEN
Graf-Adolf-Strasse, Düsseldorf
5 September – 25 October 2014
An evening. Sometime in the Twentieth Century. Pedestrians on a promenade. Between the Main Station and Königsallee. From cinema to cinema. Move. Rather slowly. Stand around. Move by. Linger. Move further along. Take a pause. Continue on their ways. Turn back. Stop by. Go under. Pop up. Move. Rather quickly. Disappear.
On the occasion of the DC open - the opening of the season for the Düsseldorf and Cologne galleries - Linn Lühn will present a new work by the artist Andreas Schmitten, especially developed for the gallery.
The two part work, Graf-Adolf-Straße, Düsseldorf, is named after one of the most important traffic arteries in downtown Düsseldorf and incorporates many characteristic aspects of Schmitten’s practice. The work address urbanity, public space and their transformations and contrasts. It’s about backdrops and atmospheres, film and reality, play and models, inside and outside, art and realities.
For a good century, the Graf-Adolf-Straße, between the Main Station and Königsallee, was a vibrant promenade. Along those few hundred metres, there were a multitude cinemas. In the evenings, countless pedestrians would stroll along the street, study film programmes, drift, randomly comb through the cinemas and enliven the cityscape. At the turn of the century, the cinemas began to die out and since then the Graf-Adolf-Strasse has also been dead. The city’s attempts at resuscitation have remained unsuccessful. With this work, Andreas Schmitten thematises a development which is typical for the misery of many cities, if only at the margins. Here , it’s not about nostalgic kitsch, nor is it a critique of technological progress and the development of multiplex cinemas or shopping malls at the cost of the urban landscape. It’s not about the good old days.
Schmitten regards these structures of an extinct culture from a sort of meta perspective and creates analogies with the focus of his own work: how people move along predefined paths like tokens in a board game. They pace out the distances between points, trek to and fro, forwards and backwards, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, stand around and then disappear. Yet, another level of reality opens up as they enter the cinema. They escape the game for a short time before the cinema hall spits them back out and they once again become part of the scenery in the greater backdrop of the city.
Andreas Schmitten’s works sensitise one to the contrasts within everyday life, to shifts in perceptions, reality and superordinate systems.
The work, Graf-Adolf-Straße, Düsseldorf, consists of two central elements, which in Schmitten’s characteristic style move somewhere between installation, autonomous sculpture, models and furniture. On a large, round, multicoloured pedestal resembling a table, small geometric modules have been laid out which remind one of streets and buildings. The urban spaces suggested are populated by stiff and shadowy figures who also reoccur in the second element, an illuminated object resembling a shelf. The viewer is thus confronted by a spatial arrangement which allows numerous association, but nonetheless the title gives these associations a concrete direction.
Alongside winning many noteworthy scholarships and prizes, Andreas Schmitten completed his studies at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf as Meisterschüler of Georg Herold in 2012. Since then he has been extending his list of international exhibitions which had already begun during his studies. In 2013, he exhibited at the Kuntmuseum Bonn, the Bonnefantenmuseum in Roermond and the Kunstsammlung NRW, among others.
Linda Walter
Graf-Adolf-Strasse, Düsseldorf
5 September – 25 October 2014
An evening. Sometime in the Twentieth Century. Pedestrians on a promenade. Between the Main Station and Königsallee. From cinema to cinema. Move. Rather slowly. Stand around. Move by. Linger. Move further along. Take a pause. Continue on their ways. Turn back. Stop by. Go under. Pop up. Move. Rather quickly. Disappear.
On the occasion of the DC open - the opening of the season for the Düsseldorf and Cologne galleries - Linn Lühn will present a new work by the artist Andreas Schmitten, especially developed for the gallery.
The two part work, Graf-Adolf-Straße, Düsseldorf, is named after one of the most important traffic arteries in downtown Düsseldorf and incorporates many characteristic aspects of Schmitten’s practice. The work address urbanity, public space and their transformations and contrasts. It’s about backdrops and atmospheres, film and reality, play and models, inside and outside, art and realities.
For a good century, the Graf-Adolf-Straße, between the Main Station and Königsallee, was a vibrant promenade. Along those few hundred metres, there were a multitude cinemas. In the evenings, countless pedestrians would stroll along the street, study film programmes, drift, randomly comb through the cinemas and enliven the cityscape. At the turn of the century, the cinemas began to die out and since then the Graf-Adolf-Strasse has also been dead. The city’s attempts at resuscitation have remained unsuccessful. With this work, Andreas Schmitten thematises a development which is typical for the misery of many cities, if only at the margins. Here , it’s not about nostalgic kitsch, nor is it a critique of technological progress and the development of multiplex cinemas or shopping malls at the cost of the urban landscape. It’s not about the good old days.
Schmitten regards these structures of an extinct culture from a sort of meta perspective and creates analogies with the focus of his own work: how people move along predefined paths like tokens in a board game. They pace out the distances between points, trek to and fro, forwards and backwards, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, stand around and then disappear. Yet, another level of reality opens up as they enter the cinema. They escape the game for a short time before the cinema hall spits them back out and they once again become part of the scenery in the greater backdrop of the city.
Andreas Schmitten’s works sensitise one to the contrasts within everyday life, to shifts in perceptions, reality and superordinate systems.
The work, Graf-Adolf-Straße, Düsseldorf, consists of two central elements, which in Schmitten’s characteristic style move somewhere between installation, autonomous sculpture, models and furniture. On a large, round, multicoloured pedestal resembling a table, small geometric modules have been laid out which remind one of streets and buildings. The urban spaces suggested are populated by stiff and shadowy figures who also reoccur in the second element, an illuminated object resembling a shelf. The viewer is thus confronted by a spatial arrangement which allows numerous association, but nonetheless the title gives these associations a concrete direction.
Alongside winning many noteworthy scholarships and prizes, Andreas Schmitten completed his studies at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf as Meisterschüler of Georg Herold in 2012. Since then he has been extending his list of international exhibitions which had already begun during his studies. In 2013, he exhibited at the Kuntmuseum Bonn, the Bonnefantenmuseum in Roermond and the Kunstsammlung NRW, among others.
Linda Walter