Since 1985 Gregor Schneider has been building a series of rooms or chambers within his outwardly ordinary house in Monchengladbach. The external construction conceals a series of inner layers with the walls/doors/rooms not what they seem. Kaffezimmer, the chamber Schneider receives visitors in has bone-cramping proportions and (unknown to the visitor) can turn on a 360 degree axis so that you exit into a completely different space to that through which you entered. Some rooms are empty; others contain elaborately constructed tableaus fo both found objects and Schneider's sculpture as in Kuche (kitchen), where a jumble of trashed clothes, rubbish and a blow up doll lie stinking on the floor.
The physical experience of crawling between each completed chamber (guestroom, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, brothel) through dusty layers of lead, plaster panels, sliding walls, polystyrene pits and insulating foam, is undoubtedly threatening. The sense of disorientation and discomfort is compounded, as in the viewing of a horror movie, by the imagining of these spaces as the site of some sinister trap or drama.
In the exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ Gregor Schneider will show video journeys through the house. A photography edition documents the constant re-arranging of the rooms and the reappearance of several sculptural elements within different tableaus. Individual sculptures from some of the rooms will also be shown, giving a sense of the materials of the house construction, along with a video projection of the 'brothel' in the basement.
Gregor Schneider lives and works in his house in Rheydt-Monchengladbach. He has had solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Bern, Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart and Portikus, Frankfurt. Major exhibitions of Schneider's work are planned for Galerie Foksal, Warsaw in December and ARC Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Stadisches Museum Abteiberg, Monchengladbach in 1998.
For further information please contact the gallery at +44 (0)20 7493 8611 or press@sadiecoles.com