Overview
Marian Goodman Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of an exhibition of new work by Thomas Schütte on Thursday, May 12th. The show will run through July 2nd. Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 am to 6 pm.
For the exhibition the artist will present new proposals for living. On view in the North Gallery will be a series of five architectural models on a scale of 1:5 titled One Man Houses, complete with scale model furniture. On exhibit in the South Gallery will be real furniture, wood works in human scale, as well as vases, lamps, curtains, and wares for daily use.
Thomas Schütte: One Man Houses
May 12 - July 2, 2005
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 12, 6-8 pm
Marian Goodman Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of an exhibition of new work by Thomas Schütte on Thursday, May 12th. The show will run through July 2nd. Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 am to 6 pm.
For the exhibition the artist will present new proposals for living. On view in the North Gallery will be a series of five architectural models on a scale of 1:5 titled One Man Houses, complete with scale model furniture. On exhibit in the South Gallery will be real furniture, wood works in human scale, as well as vases, lamps, curtains, and wares for daily use.
This new series of scale-model sculptural houses and works for an individually useable architecture continues the trajectory of concrete designs for living and practical use-value in art by Thomas Schütte that began with such earlier models as Westkunst, 1981, and was seen in subsequent works such as, for example, Studio I and Studio II (1982), House 3: House for two friends (1983), Landhaus (Country House), 1986, E.L.S.A., W.A.S., or H.Q., (all 1989).
One of the most notable artists of his generation, Thomas Schütte's work is characterized by heterogenous media and has included installation, construction, sculpture, architectural models, painting, drawings, graphic works and watercolors. His exploration of the role of the sculptor has from the beginning been marked by virtuosity, diverse and thoughtful strategies, experimentation with scale, material, genre, and an independence of form. From early architectural models and theatrical constructions to houses and utilitarian design; from bunkers and hypothetical memorials to ironic monuments; from early figures, heads and vessels to geister action figures; and from ceramic 'sketches' to bronze and steel frauen, Schütte's body of work has embraced the symbolic, the memorial, the ironic, the functional, and the realm of social commentary.
Within his range of sculpture, the model form itself has often permitted the artist license to develop a certain 'form of language, as well as a form of play, … a form for trying things out" (Schütte, in
Thomas Schütte (Dumont, 2004), p. 110). The scale models on view, refined plans for the useful organization of living, resume a praxis that has existed in Schütte's oeuvre since the early eighties: sculpture as architectural model as well as proposals for art for practical use. However, they differ from earlier works in that, rather than being models for a utopian fantasy, or for an ideal life, One Man Houses concentrate on the notion of being useful; they are intended to be realized and to be built.
Thomas Schütte's work has been included in several recent group exhibitions, including the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum fur Gegenwart, Berlin through March 28, 2005; Regarding Terror: The RAF Exhibition, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, through May 16th; Universal Experience: Art, Life and the Tourist's Eye, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, through June 2005; and Faces in the Crowd, at the Castello di Rivoli, Turin through July 20th. His work was recently seen in Sculpture Between Melancholy and Doubt: Uneasy Realism in Contemporary Sculpture at the Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna through February 2005, as well as Disparities and Deformations: Our Grotesque, SITE Sante Fe Fifth Biennial, Sante Fe, New Mexico, through January 2005. Earlier and important group exhibitions have included Documenta X, IX, VIII, in '97, '92 and '87, Kassel; Skuptur Projekte in Munster, 1987; Sonsbeek '86, Arnhem, The Netherlands; Von Hier Aus, 1984, Düssseldorf; and Westkunst-Heute, 1981 Cologne.
Over the past decade and a half there have been countless solo exhibitions of his work at international institutions including, most recently, a solo show which originated at Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland (2003) and later travelled to to the Musée de Grenoble and K21, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2003-2004). A selection of other one-man shows includes, as well, the Folkwang Museum, Essen (2002); Sammlung Goetz, Munich (2001); a survey in three parts at Dia Center for the Arts, New York (1998-2000); Fundacao Serralves, Portugal (1998); De Pont Foundation, Tilburg, (1998); Kunsthalle, Hamburg (1994); ARC Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1990); as well as the Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, (1990).
