Dierk Schmidt, "Aus, die Teilung der Erde, Zeichnungen und Materialien"
13.3. – 9.5.2009
13.3. – 9.5.2009
images more information
» deutsche version
Dierk Schmidt grasps his works as a medium of political examination and as a way to reveal historical conflicts of interest. He deals with the artistic genre of historical painting and the political lines of tradition in modern painting.
In the work series, “The Division of the Earth”, the first part of which he began in 2005 at the Salzburger Kunstverein and continued in 2007 at the documenta, Dierk Schmidt approaches the historical complex by developing pictorial semiotics whose sources lie in the traditions of both diagrammatic-statistical and cartographic representation, and modern abstract painting. Against this background, Schmidt seeks to combine various types and degrees of abstraction in law, politics and art to form an aesthetic complex.
» deutsche version
Dierk Schmidt grasps his works as a medium of political examination and as a way to reveal historical conflicts of interest. He deals with the artistic genre of historical painting and the political lines of tradition in modern painting.
In the work series, “The Division of the Earth”, the first part of which he began in 2005 at the Salzburger Kunstverein and continued in 2007 at the documenta, Dierk Schmidt approaches the historical complex by developing pictorial semiotics whose sources lie in the traditions of both diagrammatic-statistical and cartographic representation, and modern abstract painting. Against this background, Schmidt seeks to combine various types and degrees of abstraction in law, politics and art to form an aesthetic complex.
“The current exhibition, ‘From: The Division of the Earth”, features a collection of Dierk Schmidt’s drawings, studies, materials, and tableaux, in which one encounters layouts and plans permeated by abstract marks and traces. Using these markings, he conveys how politics is performed by occupying spaces, both as occupation and resistance.
In conceptual terms, the series starts with the so-called Congo Conference in Berlin (or Berlin Africa Conference) in 1884/85 – based on orange tableaux depicting the ground plan of the Kronprinzenpalais and a map of the Congo Basin, on which the occupying nations are indicated. The end of the series, for the time being, is a panel dedicated to the action filed against the German Federal Government and three German companies in 2001.