Gregor Schneider Book order

Gregor Schneiders Werke sind komplett gebaute Räume – sichtbar und unsichtbar, verdoppelt und gedoppelt. Akribisch konstruiert er Räume in bestehenden Strukturen und beobachtet, wie Eingriffe in die Logik der Architektur unsere Wahrnehmung beeinflussen – beängstigend, desorientierend und auf unheimliche Weise faszinierend. Auf zahlreichen farbigen Tafeln zeigt Schneider charakteristische ›Touren‹ mit selbst fotografierten Ansichten, die uns durch das Unterbewusste verdrängter Erfahrungen und Ängste führen. Die erste Tour führt durch eine monumentale, begehbare Skulptur in ein 'schwarzes Loch' und dann durch eine Feuerleiter in sechs Räume. Diese sind Teil seines Langzeitprojekts Haus u r, das er 1985 begann und 2001 auf der Biennale in Venedig mit dem Goldenen Löwen ausgezeichnet wurde. Die Räume sind spärlich möbliert, mit nur wenigen spurenhaften Elementen. Die zweite Tour umfasst verdoppelte Räume, die teils begehbar, teils durch Spiegel erfahrbar sind. Die Orientierung wird hinterfragt, da das bereits Gesehene sich im nächsten Raum wiederholt: Bin ich hier oder dort? Zeit- und Raumgefühl verschwimmen, während das Thema der 'Verdoppelung' das künstlerische Original in Frage stellt. Diese umfassendste Monografie über Gregor Schneider wurde maßgeblich vom Künstler selbst gestaltet.

Until recently, Gregor Schneider has focused primarily on Dead House ur , the ongoing 20-year transformation of his parents' former home in Rheydt, Germany, which was reconstructed in the German Pavilion at the 2001 Venice Biennale when Schneider was awarded the Golden Lion for Sculpture. On a smaller scale, on October 2, 2004, Die Familie Schneider took up residence in neighboring identical houses on a very ordinary street in London's East End. This book is Schneider's extension of that work, a document and exploration of his obsession with repression, reproduction and particularly, in this case, repetition in images and text. Schneider is internationally renowned for his unnerving presentation of normality, and his medium is the room--kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom--and the cellar. Under his hand, the domestic environment becomes the site of an unrelenting existential confrontation.

Description: "Making is a higher form of thinking," claims Gregor Schneider, who began to "make" art as an adolescent. So urgent was his desire to be an artist that, in order to pay for the materials he needed to make his sculptures, he even worked as a gravedigger. Introverted, self-effacing, and a close observer of human behavior--with a particular passion for the lowliest of social categories--Schneider has developed an all-absorbing identification with his work, living together with it night and day in an apartment he soundproofed from the rest of the world. Schneider has tried his hand at film, painting, and sculpture, but most remarkable is the installation he created between 1985 and 1994, in his home. There he built rooms within rooms, walls in front of walls, doors that led nowhere and windows that opened onto dead spaces. When questioned about his motivations, he would defiantly proclaim, "I can't do anything else."

Chosen to represent Germany in the 2001 Venice Biennale, Gregor Schneider has, since the 1980s, dedicated himself to building rooms as an expression of his art. The focus of his work has been an ordinary tenement building in Germany, known as "Haus u r," where he has lived while transforming it into a building of great atmospheric density though the process of continuous rebuilding.This book documents Schneider's work on the German Pavilion for the Venice Biennale.