Gregor Schneider
Born 1969, Rheydt, West Germany
Lives and works in Rheydt

Gregor Schneider began working on Haus ur in 1985 at the age of sixteen. The rooms on view here are part of his ever-changing construction and reproduction of the interior of his house in Rheydt, Germany. This work is built within his house and is contained—by a slight scaling down—within the rooms that the work exactly replicates. For this exhibition, a suite of rooms has been carefully cut out and transported to the museum where the artist has reassembled them. Presented as a sculptural environment, Schneider’s work reveals evidence of his various layers of construction, the elaborate process of their making, and the intense materiality involved in re-creating an entire home. Haus ur is a quotation and extension of the original that reveals how an apparently normal and benign space can trap and disorient through illusion and mystery.

Gregor Schneider, Haus ur, 1985-, (installation detail)

Gregor Schneider has been exhibiting his work since 1992 and has had gallery exhibitions in Mönchengladbach, Düsseldorf, Berlin, Cologne, Tokyo, Amsterdam, London, Warsaw, and Milan, including Konrad Fischer Galerie, Düsseldorf (1993, 1999); Galerie Luis Campaña, Cologne (1995, 1997, 1999); and Galeria Foksal, Warsaw (1997). He has presented solo exhibitions at Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld (1994); Kunsthalle Bern and Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (1996); Portikus Frankfurt am Main (1997); Städtisches Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and Århus Kunstmuseum (1998). Recently, his work was included in several important group exhibitions, including No Man’s Land, Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld (1997); Performing Buildings, Tate Gallery, London (1998); and Anarchitecture, De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam, and Zeitwenden, Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn, in cooperation with Kunstmuseum Bonn (1999).

Education
1989-92 Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich

1989-92 Hochschule für bildende Künste, Hamburg

Selected Further Reading
Richie, Matthew. “Franz Ackermann, Manfred Pernice, Gregor Schneider: The New City.” art/text, no. 65 (May-July 1999): 72-74.

Dziewior, Yilmaz. “Gregor Schneider: Städtisches Museum Abteiberg.” Translated by Diana Reese. Artforum 36, no. 10 (summer 1998): 142-43.

Städtisches Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach, Germany, in collaboration with Portikus Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and Galeria Foksal, Warsaw, Poland. Gregor Schneider: Dead House ur 1985-1997 (1997). Exhibition catalogue, text by Viet Loers, Brigitte Kölle, Adam Szymczyk, and Ulrich Loock, and interview by Ulrich Loock.

Krefelder Kunstmuseen, Germany. Gregor Schneider: Museum Haus Lange Krefeld, 1994 (1994). Exhibition catalogue.

Galerie Löhrl am Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, Germany. Impulse 17: Gregor Schneider (1992). Exhibition brochure.