Andreas Schulze
January 15–March 23, 2011
Berlin
Ever since the 1980s, Andreas Schulze has focused on various interior views of our society. Most often, his works depict everyday landscapes and bourgeois idylls which he constructs as subtle, parallel worlds to reality. His early paintings consist of intensely colored compositions in which the dimensions of sculptural globes and other geometrical forms are shifted and inner pictorial perspectives constantly change. Schulze situates motifs which relate to the formal language of Conceptual Art and Minimal Art in illusionistic spaces which above all seek sensory experience, humor and immediate contact with the viewer. In his later works, Schulze paints suburbs, single-family dwellings or living rooms which are carefully provided with furniture, lamps, rugs and porcelain. Furthermore, he designs large-format spatial installations which extend the themes of his pictures into the exhibition space by means of found objects and his own sculptures. His works establish complex relationships between worldly objects and ornamental décors which make reference to both bohemian lifestyles and bourgeois normality. Simple, often unnoticed objects approach each other in enigmatic freedom: they become the protagonists of a concealed narrative and are assigned a performance filled with significance. The artist gives thematic treatment to the power of illusion within painting which he always ironically disrupts in the pictures. In his works, the things do not hide the fact that they are imitations, and as signs they refer back to themselves in precise self-awareness. Schulze's deserted, melancholic landscapes and interiors convey both coziness and menace. They manifest the social yearning for secureness and comfort as well as an estrangement of the ‘private’ in which the bourgeois need for harmony turns out to be narrowly restrictive.