Thomas Schütte One Man Houses 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. Exhibition: May 12 - July 2, 2005 Gallery hours: Mon-Sat 10 am - 6 pm Marian Goodman Gallery 24 West 57th Street USA-New York 10019, NY Telephone +1 212 977 71 60 Fax +1 212 581 51 87 Email goodman@mariangoodman.com www.mariangoodman.com |
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