Exhibition

Erik Schmidt: Retreat

18 Sep 2022 – 30 Oct 2022

Regular hours

Monday
Closed
Tuesday
10:00 – 18:00
Wednesday
10:00 – 18:00
Thursday
10:00 – 18:00
Friday
10:00 – 18:00
Saturday
10:00 – 18:00
Sunday
10:00 – 18:00

Free admission

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Kunstraum Potsdam

Potsdam, Germany

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Art Space Potsdam | Waschhaus is pleased to present Erik Schmidt's latest solo show Retreat, in which he transforms the exhibition space into his own ephemeral paradise.

About

The multifaceted German painter (*1968)'s creative exploration is often shaped by the narratives of his experiences abroad and his desire to illustrate his perception of foreign cultures.

The exhibition introduces us to a six-week trip he undertook last spring to Sri Lanka, at the invitation of the one world foundation, to the villages around the capital Colombo, where mass protests began in March 2022 and spread across the country. Protests by people who are still recovering - thirteen years after the end of a long civil war - are now grappling with an economic crisis that includes power outages and shortages of basic commodities like fuel, food and medicines.

In No Crisis, a series of drawings based on photographs taken by the artist while exploring the streets, Schmidt separates figures from the flow of people and portrays them on the newspaper pages from which he receives the national news daily. The result is a highly expressive juxtaposition of bold strokes that offers a real insight into the local community despite the area's limited color palette and humidity.

The artist's optical filtering of the world is evident in Palm Bombs, large-scale paintings based on photographs of palm trees taken during his residency at the one world foundation, first printed on canvas and then painted over in his studio. Schmidt's perspective allows the viewer a bottom-up view of the palm trees, which is usually forbidden to avoid injury from falling coconuts. The impasto technique is applied here with an aggressive stroke, and the impasto oil paint becomes palpably sculptural and abstracted into pure disturbing colour. Overwhelmed by surroundings with such political connotations, even the painter's fascinated gaze is marred. Nature itself becomes a war zone through his brushstrokes: fruits become bombs,

The remains of these explosions - fallen from the same trees - lie on the floor of the room and look like guns and hand grenades. More newspaper pages lie on a hanger, overwritten with slogans, as if one is desperately trying to erase the news one is forced to read. The expectation that the Palm House is paradise fails, bringing us back to the violent failure of civilization.

The futile search for a place of refuge can also be found in the two videos Fine and Inizio, which are thematically related to the paintings but play in a different geographical and temporal context. In this part of the exhibition, the scenario shifts from tangible reality to Schmidt's own inner dimension, paradise lost, where the illusion of a haven is once again unattainable. A self-exploration through guilt and catharsis that no doubt arose out of the turbulence of his life's journey and finally leads to the conscious realization that there is no longer room in the world for retreat.

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Erik Schmidt

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