Gregor Schneider

Gregor Schneider's contribution to the 2001 Venice Biennale was awarded the Golden Lion. Since the eighties the artist has devoted his attentions to the construction of rooms, to the complicated relationship between constructed space and individual, and to the interchange between place and psychological state. For the Venice project Schneider transferred extensive sections of his otherwise private house, the so-called Haus ur in Rheydt, to the German pavilion in Venice. Crossing the threshold, entering this house, taking a look behind the scenes of the monumental portal is equivalent to taking a path into the depths, indeed the abyss, of the Ego - and thereby to the source of its collective phenomena. The Venice project thus defines a counter-space to the house's historical exterior - refurbished and ideologically instrumentalized in 1938: Here the outer world, there the inner, here the collective sphere, there the individual, here the pathos of a representative building, there the retreat into the Ego. This volume contains photographs taken by the artist to document his contribution to the Venice Biennale. The artist: Gregor Schneider, born 1969 in Mönchengladbach-Rheydt. 1989-1992 studied at the art academies in Dusseldorf, Munster and Hamburg. Began work on Haus ur in Rheydt in 1985. Winner of the Golden Lion at the 2001 Venice Biennale.