Nicolaus Schmidt (artist)

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Nicolaus Schmidt (1974)

Nicolaus Schmidt (* 1953 in Arnis as Klaus Schmidt) is a contemporary artist and historian . He lives and works in Berlin .

Life

Nicolaus Schmidt studied at the University of Fine Arts and the University of Hamburg in the early 1970s . At the HfbK he studied with Kilian Breier , a photographer whose work can be added to concrete art . During his studies he founded Rosa , one of the first newspapers in the gay movement that was developing at the time .

In the 1980s, in addition to his artistic work, he was involved in development policy, from 1984 to 1988 as chairman of terre des hommes Deutschland e. V.

In December 1990, the artist and his partner Christoph Radke bought an apartment building in Berlin Prenzlauer Berg against competition from real estate investors in the first auction of East German real estate after German reunification . The auction by the "Berlin property auctions" of the West Berlin real estate agent Plettner was preceded by protests from the residents. It took place with a strong media presence and had to be temporarily interrupted due to protests. In the press reports about the surprising turnaround at the auction, the artist explained that he and his partner had arranged to meet the residents shortly before the auction in order to renovate the house in consultation with them in the event of an auction.

Shortly after the auction, press reports questioned whether the house should have been auctioned at all, as it had a Jewish previous owner in 1937 and could have been a case of Aryanization . One year after the auction, Nicolaus Schmidt and Christoph Radke accused the auctioneer of having been "a bad deal". It took eight years to clarify the ownership structure. The artists eventually bought it from the Jewish Claims Conference , which they themselves had informed early on. The deal of the auctioneer Hans Peter Plettner, who had declared in 1991 about this possibility, the Aryanization, "then I just traded in lemons", was reversed. In addition to Nicolaus Schmidt and Christoph Radke, other artists live in the house today, as do some of the residents from 1990.

plant

Cerro-Rico-Aktion, Hamburg 1982

Actions in public space

In 1982 Nicolaus Schmidt in Hamburg with the Cerro Rico -action a combination of public art and developmental work here. Accompanied by a campaign in the media, 100,000 tinplate cans were collected as a hands-on activity and erected in Hamburg's city center as a symbolic, silvery mountain, which was supposed to remind of the mountain of the same name in Potosí in Bolivia . With this action, Schmidt recalled the historical exploitation of the wealth of the South American countries by the European nations and pointed to the current problem of child labor in this mountain at 4000 meters high. The Cerro Rico campaign was the model for a number of other development-policy publicity campaigns, up to and including the establishment of a shoe mountain by the Landmine coalition in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin in 1996.

A more recent campaign in public space was the 2008 RECONSTRUCCIÓN! (together with Christoph Radke) during the 10th Portes Obertes with which a sign should be set against the demolition policy of the city of Valencia in the El Cabanyal district .

Painting, graphics, sculpture

From the end of the 1980s, Nicolaus Schmidt developed a range of works that he calls morphograms . These are greatly reduced signs that Schmidt derives from the shapes of human bodies. Originally created as painting and graphic work, Nicolaus Schmidt later developed the morphograms into relief-like works. An example of this is the cycle On the Creation of Adam as Art in Public Space in Berlin-Hellersdorf (1994).

Since 2004 Nicolaus Schmidt has been working on a cosmography Gayhane, which deals with an amalgam from western and oriental culture and again includes an examination of the project of gay self-realization. In this project, Schmidt combined photographic portraits of visitors to the gay and lesbian Turkish party series "Gayhane" in the Berlin club SO 36 with his morphographic characters, which he has now developed into an Arabic-style font. Through this project photography became an important medium for the artist.

photography

Nicolaus Schmidt, poster for the WELTEN exhibition, Richard Haizmann Museum - Museum of Modern Art Niebüll

The artist's photographic projects focus on social groups within a society and social interactions between people in one place or worldwide.

After the cosmography of Gayhane (Berlin), the project NYBP ( New York Breakdancers Project ) was created in 2007 in collaboration with New York breakdancers . In a first exhibition in 2009 at the Deutsches Haus at New York University , the artist showed large-format photographs on the relationship between breakdancing and urban space. "Nicolaus Schmidt's photos are based on the idea of ​​giving the dancers complete freedom in their performance and of appearing as a photographer like a quasi neutral observer." (Aboli Lion) His book Breakin 'the city (2010) is a portrait of New Yorker B -Boys in the backdrop of the urban architecture. The photos combine dance and architecture photography, even if he himself says he is not a dance or architecture photographer. “I'm interested in people with a strong charisma who make something positive out of their life, even if the circumstances are difficult.” In his book Nicolaus Schmidt presents the urban landscape of New York as a field of experimentation.

In 2011 Nicolaus Schmidt published facebook: friends, the first book that deals with the photo albums of millions of Facebook users. In reference to the working techniques of the art historian Aby Warburg , Schmidt arranged photos of individual Facebook users on a double page to form a composition. As a whole, the book aims to be a collection of material.

In 2013 the artist published his second New York book "Astor Place | Broadway | New York" about a legendary barber shop in which up to 50 hairdressers, immigrated from all corners of the world, work in a basement room in downtown Manhattan. According to the Rheinischer Post, the business founded by Italian immigrants is "a museum that lives". In him the "American dream at the hairdresser's" comes true.

An exhibition with photographs of Indian women at the India International Center, New Delhi , received a lot of media coverage in India in 2015. Nicolaus Schmidt's photographs reflect the situation of women, caught between tradition, religion and modernity. The contradictions in the relationships between men and women become clear, as well as the enormous self-confidence of Dalit women from remote villages in Uttar Pradesh, for example . Some of the women photographed by the artist were present at the exhibition opening. The story of Urmila Gorakh, who as a Dalit woman traveled to Delhi by train for the first time in her life and then naturally chatted with the German ambassador Michael Steiner at the opening , was reported by several media outlets. The exhibition and the book INDIA WOMEN also met with a wide response in the European press. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote in 2015, “Although the victims of persistent patriarchy, the women in Schmidt's pictures do not appear weak. [...] His photos show a demythed India and make the power of social structures visible. "

history

In 2010 Nicolaus Schmidt published a research on the National Socialist past of the Schleswig-Holstein artist Gerhart Bettermann , who until then was considered a prime example of a committed leftist artist. The research found a big echo in the newspapers in Schleswig-Holstein . In response, an exhibition planned by Schmidt in Kappeln was canceled. The canceled exhibition with photographs from the breakdancer project was finally shown in Arnis, the artist's birthplace not far from Kappeln.

On the occasion of the 350th anniversary of today's city of Arnis, Nicolaus Schmidt published his book "Arnis 1667-2017" in 2017. With more than 30 articles, he presented the first scientifically based presentation of the history of Germany's smallest city. In the general story, the author introduces a number of new historical findings, for example on the dispute between Duke Christian Albrecht of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf and Detlef von Rumohr . According to this, the establishment of the Arnis shipping location was, on the one hand, integrated into the policy of separating the duchy from the Danish kingdom, and, on the other hand, the attempt to gain an additional source of income for the fragmented duchy through this establishment, similar to the founding of Friedrichstadt . The opponent Detlef von Rumohr, who wanted to force the Kappelner into serfdom and forced them to emigrate to Arnis, had been in the service of the Danish army.

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1987: Ve-Vie-Lu , Secret Art Association, Hamburg
  • 1992: Galerie Graf & Schelble, Basel
  • 1994: Morphograms , Flensburg Municipal Museum
  • 1997: 26 morphograms of a young man , ACUD Gallery, Berlin
  • 2006: Gayhane , level +14, Hamburg
  • 2008: Cosmography Gayhane , Deutsches Haus at NYU , New York
  • 2008: RECONSTRUCCIÓN! , X. Portes Obertes , Valencia, Spain
  • 2009: God Dancing / Spiders Flipping , Deutsches Haus at NYU, New York
  • 2011: Breakin 'the city , Galerie Schmalfuss, Berlin
  • 2012: Facebook: Friends , Schmalfuss Gallery, Berlin
  • 2013: Astor Place , Galerie Schmalfuss, Berlin
  • 2014: Astor Hair, New York & Vokuhila, Berlin: Hairstyling & Social Marketplace , Deutsches Haus at NYU , New York
  • 2014: Worlds , Richard Haizmann Museum, Niebüll
  • 2015: Diversity and Strength - Photographs of Women in India , India International Center , New Delhi , India
  • 2015: MONSIEUR VUONG , Gallery of the Art Foundation K52, Berlin
  • 2016: Women in India: Strength and Diversity, Schwartzsche Villa Gallery , Berlin
  • 2016: BREAKIN 'THE CITY , VHS photo gallery , Stuttgart
  • 2016: Topography and Myth (together with Tuguldur Yondonjamts), Gallery of the Art Foundation K52, Berlin
  • 2017: INDIA WOMEN , VHS photo gallery, Stuttgart
  • 2018: Germany in Vietnam , Deutsches Haus Ho Chi Minh City , Ho Chi Minh City
  • 2018: Germany in Vietnam , open-air exhibition in large formats, German Embassy Hanoi
  • 2019: Viet Duc - Photographs , Hu Kultur Culture Museum

Publications

Art, photography

history

  • Nicolaus Schmidt: The painting of the Kappelner Rathaussaale in 1937 - the other side of Gerhart Bettermann's biography . In: Art History , Open Peer Reviewed Journal, 2011
  • Nicolaus Schmidt: Willi Lassen - a biographical sketch. In: Democratic History. Vol. 26, Schleswig-Holsteinischer Geschichtsverlag, 2015.
  • Nicolaus Schmidt: Arnis. 1667 2017. The smallest city in Germany . Wachholtz-Verlag, 2017, ISBN 978-3-933862-49-5
  • Nicolaus Schmidt: Arnis 350 years ago . In: Yearbook of the Heimatverein der Landschaft fishing , Sörup 2017, p. 260 ff.
  • Nicolaus Schmidt: Viet Duc, German-Vietnamese biographies as a mirror of history , Kerber Verlag, Bielefeld 2018, ISBN 978-3-7356-0484-2
  • Nicolaus Schmidt: Talking stones in the Arniss cemetery . In: Yearbook of the Heimatverein der Landschaft fishing No. 83, Sörup 2019, p. 192 ff.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nicolaus Schmidt, Breakin 'the City, Kerber Verlag, Bielefeld, 2010, p. 156
  2. ↑ a b Like a fish finger among rental sharks . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , December 13, 1990; as well as articles in Welt, Bild, Berliner Kurier u. a.
  3. ↑ a b Room with a View , Berliner Zeitung, October 2, 2010.
  4. ↑ Kollwitz52.de: Chronology, December 15, 1990
  5. ↑ a b Then we just traded in lemons, Tagesspiegel, December 3, 1991
  6. ↑ kunstaspekte.de
  7. ↑ El País : El Cabanyal se abre al arte , October 18, 2008
  8. ↑ Peter Schwanewilms in the text on the exhibition in the Deutsches Haus / NYU (PDF; 20 kB), see: calendar spring 2008 detail , April 12, 2008 (Engl.)
  9. ^ Berliner Zeitung : The Dance from the Bronx , December 15, 2011
  10. ↑ Press release at Kunstaspekte.de
  11. ↑ The big city as a stage . In: Stuttgarter Zeitung , March 12, 2016
  12. ↑ The city as a stage . In: Photography (magazine), March 2011
  13. ↑ Picture journey on the net . In: St. Galler Tagblatt , March 3, 2012
  14. ↑ Barbara Uppenkamp: With Odysseus on the way in the sea of ​​images . In: Nicolaus Schmidt: facebook: friends . Kerber Verlag, Bielefeld 2011, p. 125
  15. ↑ Rheinische Post , May 5, 2013, The American Dream at the Hairdresser, accessed on May 7, 2013, 5:45 pm
  16. ↑ The Hindu, January 19, 2015, Jansatta ( Hindi ) and Deccan Herald, January 21, 2015, Mathrubhumi ( Malayalam ), January 23, 2015, Indian Express, January 27, 2015, etc.
  17. ↑ thehindu.com The Hindu, They broke the chains and threw off the shackles, January 19, 2015
  18. ↑ Nicolaus unveils different facets of Indian women . In: Mathrubhumi Daily , January 23, 2015.
  19. ↑ In 2015, the Tagesspiegel ran a full page, “Pride and Prejudice”, and on May 6, 2017 the Stuttgarter Zeitung headlined “Upright Head”.
  20. ↑ Kali's daughters . In: NZZ , June 20, 2015
  21. ↑ Nicolaus Schmidt: The painting of the Kappelner Rathaussaales 1937 - the other side of the biography of Gerhart Bettermann . In: Art History, Open Peer Reviewed Journal, Article 2011
  22. ↑ shz.de Flensburger Tageblatt u. a., "The flaw in the CV", November 20, 2010
  23. ↑ Flensburger Tageblatt u. a., " shz.de ", December 16, 2010
  24. ^ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , December 28, 2010
  25. ↑ Kieler Nachrichten , March 24, 2011
  26. ↑ Smallest town with a lot of history . In: Kieler Nachrichten , May 10, 2017
  27. ↑ Portrait of an urban flat share . In: Schleswiger Nachrichten , May 10, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Schmidt, Nicolaus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schmidt, Klaus (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German artist
DATE OF BIRTH 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Arnis