Andreas Schulze: On Stage

"Schulze is one of this handful of big names"

This is how Daniel Schreiber summarises it in his text. ON STAGE is the title of Andreas Schulze's show, in which he turns the Kunsthalle Nürnberg into a stage for his surreal visual worlds. Time and again, the dazzling world of entertainment meets trivial everyday aesthetics, art historical references collide with banal ornaments and bric-a-brac. Bumper to bumper, large-format pictures of seemingly well-behaved car bodies jostle each other to form a photo for a folding panel with a space-filling traffic jam. But Andreas Schulze leads us by the nose, his images of mobility, progress, dynamism and status look almost childlike. The artist has always had a special eye for the absurdities of our everyday lives. In 1989, he said that the avant-garde moved between two extremes: Intellectuality and gross banality. He, on the other hand, had always sought bourgeois mediocrity. Since then, he has quoted it with an amused shrug: amorphous tubes, bulging objects, stylised waves, points of light, foggy surfaces and exhaust clouds form peculiar landscapes. Brick walls, velour carpets, floor lamps, rubber trees and all kinds of everyday objects are the stage for familiar things that suddenly appear strange and are combined with humour and abysmalness. For many things that initially appear carefree do not represent the visual comfort zone. Andreas Schulze's visual concept is banal and enigmatic, peculiar, but for all its familiarity it creates a subliminal sense of unease.

Exhibitions:
Kunsthalle Nuremberg, 5/11/2022 - 12/2/2023
The Perimeter, London, 17/3 - 1/7/2023