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RECENT PAINTINGS
Albrecht Schnider’s sixth solo exhibition with Galerie Thomas Schulte presents large-scale sprayed acrylic lacquer paintings alongside a selection of new works on raw canvas—contrasting textured and smooth surfaces and materializing shifts in the figure-ground relationship. In the interplay between images, what comes to the fore is the scope of constructive possibilities in Schnider’s work, emerging in parallel to the constancy of his distinctive visual language. Through processes of both intuition and analysis, Schnider constructs constellations of color fields that materialize images in a state of continual becoming. Forms and planes hover before our eyes, before the surface of the canvas, occupying a space entirely their own.
Schnider’s precise, abstract paintings objects take as their source the delicate explorations of shifting planes and geometric forms found in the artist’s drawings. Though the artist’s paintings demonstrate a restrained elegance, their source drawings, swiftly sketched at the end of each day in the studio, are products of a spontaneous, intuitive process. While many of these drawings simply remain exercises, never emerging from their sketchbook, others are singled out by the artist for further exploration. From these drawings, oppositions of line and surface, presence and absence, are distilled and translated into the larger, more rigid compositions of Schnider’s paintings. The contiguity and overlap of these planes of colour and negative space toy with our sense of perception, leading us to question whether we are gazing at shattered parts of a fragmented whole or the layers and voids of a three-dimensional pictorial window.
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Selection of new works featured in the gallery's exhibition
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"Albrecht Schnider tackles the question of the nature of reality by means of the brush drawing, painting and sculpture. In doing so, his works form surprising analogies to physical, mathematical and musical strategies of appropriating reality."
Katja Blomberg, Albrecht Schnider, “On the event horizon”, Haus am Waldsee, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Berlin, 2011
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OHNE TITEL, 2020
The forms that emerge in Schnider’s images are in constant tension—between their own agency and the specificity with which they have manifested. Though they are decisively generated, firmly fixed within their own boundaries, they are nonetheless prone to shifts, transformation. Cut-out patterns alternate between positive and negative space; and even in their hard-edged abstraction, the forms take on an organic quality, forming calligraphic loops that flow from one movement to the next.
Albrecht Schnider's images on metallic backgrounds dissolve associations with objects, becoming pattern-like—emphatically two-dimensional. Frame-filling forms float in the center of the canvases. They are mostly rounded, bulbous—with either black or deep purple around their outermost edges, filled with alternating white and different color sections on the inside. There seems to be more going on in them—more interplays, contrasts and warpings.
In these sprayed lacquer paintings, the image reaches another level of anonymity, through smooth, seamless surfaces. In juxtaposition with the works on raw canvas, they introduce another contrast: the shift from smooth metallic background to raw, organic canvas. In the process, the materiality—and the constructedness—of both becomes more clearly articulated. The image is present, beyond what is immediately visible or recognizable, even when it eludes us. -
PORTRAITS
“Schnider’s head are called portraits. Although (or because?) the artist has outsourced the individualization. They are portraits and anti-portraits at once. They are about people who have stepped outside themselves. [...] In his head paintings, the artist personifies the emptiness by outlining it. He draws the contours as designations of what cannot be designated.”1
We might perhaps think of Schnider’s words here: “I constantly look at the picture. I am searching for the moment when the picture looks at me... a moment when the picture returns my gaze.” Though for Schnider, this gaze does not necessarily come from an eye, as the planes and lines of his images do not necessarily refer to anything specific or tangible—often, they are more like suggestions, an allusion to portraiture rather than a portrait of someone.1 Simon Maurer: “A New Paradise or Shades of Things That Don’t Exist”, Translation by Catherine Schelbert. In "Albrecht Schnider", Simon Maurer, Peter Zimmermann, Helmhaus Zürich Verlag für modern Kunst, Zürich, 2014
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DRAWINGS
“The drawing is the place where the artist loses consciousness. Where things come to light with unadulterated immediacy, even freedom. Albrecht Schnider consciously keeps drawing for such a long time and with such distraction (by music, for example) until he loses consciousness.”
Simon Maurer: “A New Paradise or Shades of Things That Don’t Exist”, Translation by Catherine Schelbert. In Albrecht Schnider, Simon Maurer, Peter Zimmermann, Helmhaus Zürich Verlag für modern Kunst, Zürich, 2014
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“In dance, you could speak about elevation. Arabesques playfully sweeping across the page, breaking out, first on one side, then on the other. And yet still concentrated on the middle, on the stem. The arabesque, this ambivalent hybrid between plant and abstraction: extremely suitable to the territory Schnider carves out between art and nature – engrossed, forgiving.”
Simon Maurer: “A New Paradise or Shades of Things That Don’t Exist”, Translation by Catherine Schelbert. In Albrecht Schnider, Simon Maurer, Peter Zimmermann, Helmhaus Zürich Verlag für modern Kunst, Zürich, 2014 -
SPRAY PAINTINGS
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Beyond the Vanished - A film by Rita Ziegler (2019)
"Repetition and chance are the two magic words. Repetition, so that I can sense myself. And what enables me to see the light from time to time, that’s down to chance."
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Albrecht Schnider
Helmhaus Zürich, Verlag für moderne Kunst2014Bilingual edition English / German
Published in conjunction with the exhibition Albrecht Schnider - Giacomo Santiago Rogado at the Helmhaus Zürich (26 September to 16 November 2014).Albrecht Schnider - Am Ereignishorizont
Haus am Waldsee, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Berlin2011Bilingual edition English / German
This book was published alongside the exhibition Albrecht Schnider - Am Ereignishorizont at Haus am Waldsee, Berlin (22 April to 19 June 2011).Albrecht Schnider - Die Rückseite des Spiegels
Kunstmuseum Solothurn und Verlag für moderne Kunst, Nürnberg2011Language: German
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Albrecht Schnider- Die Rückseite des Spiegels at Kunstmuseum Solothurn (15 January to 10 April 2011).
Albrecht Schnider - Das noch Mögliche
Aargauer Kunsthaus, Verlag für moderne Kunst2006Bilingual edition: English / German
This catalogue was published in conjunction with the exhibition Albrecht Schnider- Das noch Mögliche at Aargauer Kunsthaus Aarau (19 Mai to 30 Juli 2006) together with the program series Binding Sélection d'Artistes by the Binding Stiftung, 106 color illustrations.
Albrecht Schnider: Recent Paintings
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"Albrecht Schnider tackles the question of the nature of reality by means of the brush drawing, painting and sculpture. In doing so, his works form surprising analogies to physical, mathematical and musical strategies of appropriating reality."
Katja Blomberg, Albrecht Schnider, “On the event horizon”, Haus am Waldsee, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Berlin, 2011
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PORTRAITS
“Schnider’s head are called portraits. Although (or because?) the artist has outsourced the individualization. They are portraits and anti-portraits at once. They are about people who have stepped outside themselves. [...] In his head paintings, the artist personifies the emptiness by outlining it. He draws the contours as designations of what cannot be designated.”1
We might perhaps think of Schnider’s words here: “I constantly look at the picture. I am searching for the moment when the picture looks at me... a moment when the picture returns my gaze.” Though for Schnider, this gaze does not necessarily come from an eye, as the planes and lines of his images do not necessarily refer to anything specific or tangible—often, they are more like suggestions, an allusion to portraiture rather than a portrait of someone.1 Simon Maurer: “A New Paradise or Shades of Things That Don’t Exist”, Translation by Catherine Schelbert. In "Albrecht Schnider", Simon Maurer, Peter Zimmermann, Helmhaus Zürich Verlag für modern Kunst, Zürich, 2014
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DRAWINGS
“The drawing is the place where the artist loses consciousness. Where things come to light with unadulterated immediacy, even freedom. Albrecht Schnider consciously keeps drawing for such a long time and with such distraction (by music, for example) until he loses consciousness.”
Simon Maurer: “A New Paradise or Shades of Things That Don’t Exist”, Translation by Catherine Schelbert. In Albrecht Schnider, Simon Maurer, Peter Zimmermann, Helmhaus Zürich Verlag für modern Kunst, Zürich, 2014
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“In dance, you could speak about elevation. Arabesques playfully sweeping across the page, breaking out, first on one side, then on the other. And yet still concentrated on the middle, on the stem. The arabesque, this ambivalent hybrid between plant and abstraction: extremely suitable to the territory Schnider carves out between art and nature – engrossed, forgiving.”
Simon Maurer: “A New Paradise or Shades of Things That Don’t Exist”, Translation by Catherine Schelbert. In Albrecht Schnider, Simon Maurer, Peter Zimmermann, Helmhaus Zürich Verlag für modern Kunst, Zürich, 2014 -
SPRAY PAINTINGS
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Albrecht Schnider
Helmhaus Zürich, Verlag für moderne Kunst2014Bilingual edition English / German
Published in conjunction with the exhibition Albrecht Schnider - Giacomo Santiago Rogado at the Helmhaus Zürich (26 September to 16 November 2014).Albrecht Schnider - Am Ereignishorizont
Haus am Waldsee, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Berlin2011Bilingual edition English / German
This book was published alongside the exhibition Albrecht Schnider - Am Ereignishorizont at Haus am Waldsee, Berlin (22 April to 19 June 2011).Albrecht Schnider - Die Rückseite des Spiegels
Kunstmuseum Solothurn und Verlag für moderne Kunst, Nürnberg2011Language: German
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Albrecht Schnider- Die Rückseite des Spiegels at Kunstmuseum Solothurn (15 January to 10 April 2011).
Albrecht Schnider - Das noch Mögliche
Aargauer Kunsthaus, Verlag für moderne Kunst2006Bilingual edition: English / German
This catalogue was published in conjunction with the exhibition Albrecht Schnider- Das noch Mögliche at Aargauer Kunsthaus Aarau (19 Mai to 30 Juli 2006) together with the program series Binding Sélection d'Artistes by the Binding Stiftung, 106 color illustrations.