it's all Rheydt
Wako Works of Art is pleased to present a new exhibition it’s all Rheydt by a German artist Gregor Schneider. This will be his 6th solo show with us.
The focal work in this exhibition, it’s all Rheydt, Kolkata 2011 was a project held in Kolkata, the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, in order to participate in one of the largest festivals of Durga Puja which is to celebrates the eternal power of Hindu Goddess, Durga.
Supported by the German foreign office, the artist was officially invited to take a part in the occasion as to be the highlight of the inaugural event, the Germany and India Year 2011-12.
His creation was a temporal model pandal shell; that is where the goddess is housed on a podium and to be worshipped. The artist replicated a banal road-side of a city of Rheydt, through a collaboration with local artisans employing local materials. Then the road replica is set upright, vertical to the actual ground. Traditionally, the goddess figures placed inside was to be released to let go in the sacred Hooghly River in order to complete the ritual at the end of festival. The artist however pulled out sluiced religious idols at the downstream and brought back to Germany for later display as sculptural figures.
“Rheydt” is his hometown in Germany where the representative architectural work Totes Haus ur has been started since 1985, which a version won the Golden Lion for Best Pavillion in the 49th Vennice Biennale. This city is an essence penetrating his entire oeuvre. In this project, the thematic replication and signature architectural style are rooted and once again appeared in Indian traditional festivity.
The complete series of photo works of another architectural underground installation in Napoli; 400 Black Dead End (2006) is also presented along with the other notable works.
Schneider’s first large-scaled architectural installation in Japan, German Angst is highlighted in ongoing Yokohama Triennale 2014.
Gregor Schneider
Gregor Schneider was born in Rheydt, Germany in 1969. He first started making art when he was 12, and had his first solo exhibition in Germany at the age of 16. He received the Golden Lion Award at the 49th Venice Biennale (2001), and has been the subject of large-scale solo exhibitions held at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf, Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt am Main. He has recently produced site-specific works, such as the Cube installed at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin and Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, and 21 Beach Cells on Bondi Beach, Sydney, which have placed him at the center of much controversy. Schneider is currently a professor at Berlin University of the Arts, and lives and works in Rheydt.