Works Claudia Schmitz cces@gmx.de www.cces

Claudia Schmitz
oderbergerstraße 23
10435 berlin
germany
+49 163 32 55 888
cces@gmx.de
www.cces-claudiaschmitz.de
In Between – Perspectives of Migration, 2016
video projection onto wind-activated sculptures made from found plastic bags,
video|recycled plastic bags|multiple street installation with QR-Codes (dimensions variable)
Schmitz reactivates waste by recycling found plastic bags into wind-activated sculptures. Installed in the city landscape, they serve as
three-dimensional, moving screens for her video-projections. "In Between" shows images from the Mediterranean, creating
simultaneous impressions of leisure and drowning, referencing the current refugee crisis in Europe: asking questions about privilege,
waste, the sharing of riches, racism, and the hugely differing price of human life.
Claudia Schmitz‘ interventions can be found at
www.cces-claudiaschmitz.de/projects/interventionen/nyc
and via QR-Code in the cities New York, Berlin, Chemnitz [Karl-Marx-Stadt] and Budapest.
The next stops are Hong Kong and Singapore.
Museum Night 2015 at the Museum of Oldenburg and the Horst-Janssen-Museum
LIVE-VISUAL-PERFORMANCE
Livevisual-setup with 4 sources, analog and digital, inside and outside projection
In tune with the sounds of Museum Night, the visitors were captured in LiveVisuals and found themselves eye-to-eye with their own likenesses on the glassed-in front
between the Museum's garden and the exposition space. Internationally active artist Claudia Schmitz/VJ Coco Hoehn layered collages made in real-time with
simultaneous impressions and images from the museum's history and its visitors past and present.
Entelechie I-II, 2012
(after Aristotle: the object’s/subject’s very own innate aim)
reactive, inflatable, pneumatic sculpture, triggered by motion sensors
An organic shape sewn from balloon silk is rising, filling with air. Unfolding completely, then triggered by a signal it
slowly collapses – sometimes to rise again – sometimes just to remain crumpled on the ground, an empty shell of
silk.
The approaching viewer triggers an invisible sensor and causes the shape to fill with air. While the air is escaping,
the shrinking sculpture goes through a series of ever-changing shapes, re-filling in different stages of collapse.
Claudia Schmitz’s pieces create crime scenes of being – of being and its absence – her objects interfere reactively
with the architecture of a show, feeling their way, filling architectonic gaps, adapting, discovering new modes of
appearing, but also collapsing back into an empty shell. The viewer functions as a control device for these
pneumatic sculptures demonstrating how – in his imaginary freedom – he is actually submitting to the dictate of
electronic media.
„Media arrangements do not create places of satisfaction but settings of a
desire which need media spaces for ist movement in spite of never finding
the object of ist satisfaction.
This desire thus is disguising itself inside and as an image, but is
structurally empty.
This desire is adressing an escaping moment, which exists but cannot be
pinned down. This desire is connected to the “body” by the “image of the
body” thus being an “image” without becoming absorbed in it. [...]
Media arrangements [...] are facilities and alignments flanking the mental
„self-space“ in a double movement. They create a frame, they support, in
order to avoid the threatening “fall out of the image”. At the same time –
with their offer to become part of an image – they keep oscillating on a
narrow line between an empty and a filled image of the body.”
(Marie-Luise Angerer 'Die Haut ist schneller als das Bild:
Der Körper – das Reale – der Affekt')
Entelechie I, 2012
spinnaker|compressor|controlling device|movement sensor
Entelechie II, 2012
hot-air ballon silk |compressor|controlling device|movement sensor
Used Presence, 2014 – exhibition leporello
Used Presence, 2014
plastic bags|carbon rods|sticky tape|string
Death Strip today - eye to eye with waste
40 air socks made from found plastic waste
Mauer Park in Berlin, where border troops kept watch over the Iron Curtain until 1989 by now has evolved into a favourite place of leisure and a tourist
attraction. This creates atmosphere and earns the district some money, but it also creates problems, especially waste problems: One third of the
district's budget for the maintenance of its parklands is spent on cleaning Mauer Park. Schmitz's installation draws attention to the problem: How do we
want to use our urban parklands, what do we want them to look like in the future? What is the right balance between use, maintenance, and
conservation?
Schmitz offers alternatives, preparing ways towards a practical solution.
Used Presence, 2014
plastic bags|carbon rods|sticky tape|string
Death Strip today - eye to eye with waste
40 air socks made from found plastic waste
In 2014, she received the Futropolis Prize for Urban Future for her Mauer Park piece.
.
blister III, 2006
balloom silk|microphones|compressor|user
An actual person is surrounded by a silk skin – the human anatomy defines the outside shape of the sculpture. This form gets changed and broken up by
organic forms, by mobile limbs which take shape and extend themselves when the inside of the silk skin is inflated, only to collapse again with the
escaping air. The person inside can navigate the sculpture in space just by moving naturally, she can experience, explore, position herself – also in
regard to other persons. On the other hand, she can vary and determine the sculpture’s shape by manipulating the influx of air and the position of the
limbs. Taking space – giving space.
Microphones attached to the person inside the sculpture radio
body sounds (f.ex. heartbeat) and machine sounds into the
exhibition space beyond the silk skin. This works also when the
sculpture (see image) is moving outside the exhibition space,
thus externalising the inside of the body/sculpture, turning the
event location into an extended body.
This sound-body commands special attention. It is more
abstract than any image, any spoken word could be, it
translates much more slowly – at the same time its effect
is physical, immediate. Sound and space defined by sound
can be felt!
blister III, 2006
hot air ballon silk|microphones|compressor|user
blister VI, 2007
bellow|latex hose|rubber casing
blister VII, 2010
spinnaker|bellows|rubber gloves
blister V, 2007
garbage bags|fan
Peking 2008, 2008
asian wig|fan turning from left to right and back
Drawing on the Outskirts
When drawing, Claudia Schmitz invariably is exploring the outskirts of the medium: As trespassers between
drawing and relief, drawing and sculpture, drawing and video image or drawing and installation, her works revolve
around the limits of the medium: They extend the viewers' understanding of what a drawing can be - and in how
many unexpected directions and dimensions a shaped line may be stretched.
Her drawings come into being at the crossings of media: As digital images, to be watched through 3D-glasses like
her "Avatars" which are also videos; or low-tech, put into motion by the viewers' breath such as the anamorphosis
in the “long-haired"-series. They appear suddenly under your feet on or in the ground, as floor installations or
reflections, or as light drawings in the landscape - always about to suddenly expand into space, to divulge a secret
double nature - or to dissolve into light and movement.
StadtFunde, Berlin, 2016
cyanotypie on deckle edged paper
StadtFunde, Berlin, 16. Januar 2015
object found|embossing|papier
StadtFunde,Civitavecchia, Rom 2009, 2015
object found|embossing|papier
StadtFunde, Berlin, 16. Januar 2015
‘Hommage à Miró’
object found|embossing|papier
StadtFunde, Berlin, 13. Januar 2015
‘first step to Kandinsky’
object found|embossing|papier
long-haired I - II, 2007
acrylic|wax|implanted hair|cretonne|bellows|latex hose
Baladrar, Spain 2010, No8 – at night -, 2010
luminogram|lambda print behind acrylic glass
Baladrar, Spain 2010, No7 – at night -, 2010
luminogram|lambda print behind acrylic glass
and all the neighbours had rolled sod, 2010
fluorescent tube|epoxy resin|wood
The inverted neon script is suspended from the ceiling,
the tube pointing downwards. It is reflected in the
black epoxy tiles on the ground and seems to swim up
from the depth. On the ground, the text can be
deciphered.Viewers are allowed to step onto the tiles.
Mimesis I-III, 2012
acrylyc|wax|implanted hair|cretonne
Mimesis IV, 2012 (5 views)
acrylyc|wax|implanted hair|cretonne
Avatars, 2009
3D-image animation|3D glasses
Avatars, 2009
3D-image animation|3D glasses
A digitale frame inside a passepartout and a picture frame, displays a
series drawings one cut after the other. The 3D glasses make
drawings protrude into the space between piece and recipient, they
seem to become palpable and seizable.
The visible body changes grow towards the viewer – becoming
avatars, immanent in the body.
Avatars, 2009
drawing|embossing|paper
abject case, arranged 2009
wax|hair|latex relict|doll’s shoes
abject case, arranged 2009
curd soap|found objects|drawing|collage|wax|hair
Implant II, 2007
wax
Implant I - shaved, 2007
wax |hair
Implant III - hairy, 2007
wax|hair|acrylic|ink
Implant II, 2007
wax
abject II, 2008
wax |hair
extract for the Stanze No 2 catalog
„about the work of Claudia Schmitz
...medial, cosmetic, ironic...organic, plastic, irritating...
this is how I perceive Claudia Schmitz’s sculptural objects, drawings and collages.
Looking at the “smooth way shapes”, hey remind me of Jean Arp; the sight of “hairy children’s shoes” makes me think of
Robert Gober, I can feel reminiscences of Louise Bourgeois in her anatomical fragments, glass vials and test tubes…
Claudia dissects and arranges her panopticum in its glass cases until it becomes bizzarre but familiar.
Somehow we do know these aseptically and hygyenically presented “pieces”, on the other hand they chill us and make is
shiver. Apparently harmless and small, often aesthetically modified, they divulge unknown and noteworthy dimensions at a
second glance.
Often these pieces function similar to Meret Oppenheim’s Déjeuner en Fourrure, whose invitation we won’t acceot just as
we won’t have Claudia Schmitz’s “implants” implanted into our bodies.
Too late…for they have already penetrated us without any real operation, without anaesthesia, unnoticeably, through our senses.
Wolfgang Schulte Februar 2009
CLAUDIA SCHMITZ
*1975, Mainz
Artist’s Statement
"My work starts where the media intersect.
I am not interested in the modernity of technology as such but in its capacities for creating new imaginary dimensions. My arrangements constantly
assume temporary states, reject and re-invent themselves, exploring the space-time continuum, rendering visible and questioning its borders.
They investigate the limitations of media arrangements and modes of participation.
I do what is necessary."
WS 2016/2017 Lecturer at European-University Flensburg, new media and art,
„Wenn Bilder laufen lernen“
WS 2015/16 Lecturer at Tecnology Art Sciences TH Cologne
Information Science and Communication Studies, Institute of Translation and
Multilingual Communication „StopMotion as Language“
2012 Lecturer at Niederrhein College, Design Department, "Found Footage"
(with Dr. Maïté Vissault and Prof. Silvia Beck)
1999 - 2006 Studies at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM), media art
Diploma for Audiovisual Media (with distinction) with
Prof. VALIE EXPORT, Prof. Peter Zimmermann, Prof. Dr. Marie-Luise Angerer,
Susanna Schoenberg
among others:
Workshops, seminars, exchanges with class of Rosemarie Trockel, Marcel
Odenbach, class of Katharina Sieverding, class of Magdalena Jetelová,
William Forsyth, regular in the seminars of Jürgen Klauke
1996 - 1999 Cologne University, Mathematics and Fine Arts
1994 - 1996 Johannes-Gutenberg University Mainz, Film Studies and Art
History
since 2005 working as VJ (Visual Jockey) COCO HÖHN
also lecturer: artistic work and impart inclusive and for all ages - currently as for
the program of RLP (Rhineland-Palatinate) "Every Child's Art" with the project:
My first Animation, My first StopMotion
Collections
Sammlung Kupferstichkabinett (Prolog, Heft für Zeichnung)
Sammlung der Stadt Mainz
Sammlung Mundipharma
Sammlung der Investitions- und Strukturbank Rheinland-Pfalz (ISB)
Sammlung Brooklyn Art Library
Composing film music
2004 „In die Hand geschrieben“(„written inside the hand“), director: Rouven Blankenfeld,
2006 „Lieben“ („to love“), director: Rouven Blankenfeld, collaboration on the score
grants/fellowships/awards
2017 Grant by DA Kunsthaus Kloster Gravenhorst, KunstVerzehr
2016/17 Artist in Residence European-University Flensburg
2014 1. Futropolis-Preis für die Stadt der Zukunft
2014 Grant by Kulturamt Pankow von Berlin
2014 Grant by Artist’s Village Schöppingen Foundation, KunstVerzehr
2014 nominated for the Darmstadt Secession’s Art Award for young artists 2014
2013/14 nominated for the Art of Engineering Award
2013 nominated for the Award of the Palatine Secession (Pfälzische Sezession)
2013 AREnschede – Artist Residencies Enschede
2012 Grant by Artist’s Village Schöppingen Foundation
2011/12 Mentoring for Women in the fine Arts, Rhineland-Palatinate
2011 nominated for the Darmstadt Secession’s Art Award for young artists 2011
2010 nominated for the 24th Mainz Art Award for staged photograph Eisenturm 2010
Shows, Events, (Selection) Solo Shows marked „SS“
Current: InBetween - Art Market Budapest - 2B Galería + Alma New York, booth #406 – and Intervention in Budapest
Preview: UNSTUMM – collaborative project by filmmakers, video artists and musicians: Hong Kong, Singapur Nov 2016
InBetween, Hong Kong, Singapore, Okt - Nov 2016
LOVE, Atelier Schwab, Wertheim Oktober 2016 - Januar 2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
- LOVE, e-artis, Chemnitz
- InBetween + Future M [with Käthe Wenzel], Intervention, Alma on Dobbin, New York City, (US)
- Anonymous Drawings, Stadt- und Industriemuseum Rüsselsheim and Kunstverein Rüsselsheim
- Night of Museums Oldenburg, Visualperformance, Stadtmuseum Oldenburg and Horst-Janssen-Museum
- Anonymous Drawings, Galerie GEYSO20, Braunschweig
- Come home - Kommen Sie nach Hause, Cologne and Rom, (I)
- Anonymous Drawings, Galerie ARTQ13, Rom, (I)
- Anonymous Drawings, Galerie Nord, Kunstverein Tiergarten
- 25 Jahre Künstlerhaus am Acker und des 5. Jahre INSTITUT FÜR ALLES MÖGLICHE, Berlin
- Benutzte Gegenwart [with Susanna Schoenberg], Kurt im Hirsch Gallery, Berlin und Mauerpark Berlin
- Darmstadt Secession’s Art Award for Young Artists 2014, Darmstadt
- Eating Art and Benutzte Gegenwart, 25th anniversary at Kunstlerdorf Schoppingen
- berlin – Prolog Nr. X2, Institut für alles Möglich, Berlin
- Eating Art, Bus S70 Regional Transport Munsterland
- Von allen Sinnen, Kultur-Fabrik Ebertsheim
- Transfer, perFORM 2 , Königswinter
- KurtSalon, Kurt im Hirsch Gallery, Berlin
- Contemporary Art Ruhr (C.A.R.) Art Fair 2013, Zollverein, Catalog
- Award of the Palatian Secession, Neustadt-Mussbach
- Graphic Art Exchange Borken
- Peep Show – 25 years Art Society Essenheim, Mainz Townhall
- Long Night of Museums, Cologne
- limb limp [with Andrea Dettmar] – BBK (Fine Arts Association) Cologne
- Sketchbook Project, Brooklyn NY, Chicago, Portland, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Oakland, Lynn, Toronto, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Winter Park,
Austin, London
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2001, 2002
1998
1994, 1996
- all together now - open doors, atelier frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main
- Great art Exhibition Halle (Saale) 2011 - Kunsthalle Villa Kobe, Catalog
- Darmstadt Secession’s Art Award for Young Artists 2011 – Darmstadt, Catalog
- Association Treize Plus, Dijon, (F)
- Staged Photografie, 24th Mainz Art Award Eisenturm 2010, H.-J. Imiela- Memory Award
- alle nachbarn hatten rollrasen – art at the MP’s Office, Rhineland-Palatinate Parliament, Mainz, SS
- Live-Visual-Performance Designers’ Fair, Passagen, Rheintriadem, Cologne
- Stanze No2 [with Liana Zanfrisco], art Society Eisenturm Mainz e.V., Mainz, Catalog
- Mainz Cathedral, Art Society Eisenturm e.V. (MVB-Forum), Mainz
- ShopStop: refreshed!, Art Tour Maastricht (NL)
- 20 years Art Society Essenheime, Mainz Townhall
- junge kunst 13, art Society Essenheim, Nieder-Olm
- Live-Visual-Performance with the Artcore Group - ContractFuture 2030 - Initiativkreis Ruhrgebiet for VOK DAMS
- Live-Visual-Performance with the Artcore Group - OnlineStar Award, Munich
- Stanze [with Liana Zanfrisco], Museo civico del mare e delle tradizioni marinare, assessorato alla cultura, Civitavecchia, Roma, (I), Catalog
- ARGENTUM Gallery, Cologne, SS
- Live-Visual-Performance Museo civico del mare e delle tradizioni marinare, assessorato alla cultura, Civitavecchia, Roma, (I)
- Laser Center Mainz, SS
- Grenzenlos Blau, Art Society Eisenturm, Mainz
- Altitude, Academy of Media Arts Cologne [KHM] Diploma Presentation, SS
- Schmiede Wettig, Nieder-Olm, SS
- Livingston Art Building [LAB] Gallery, Rutgers The State University, Mason Gross School of the Arts, New Jersey, (US)
- Investment and Structure Bank of Rhineland-Palatinate [ISB], Mainz, SS
- Livingston Art Building [LAB] Gallery, Rutgers The State University, Mason Gross Scholl of the Arts, New Jersey, (US)
- art cologne, Cologne, with KHM, Catalog
- 3x klingeln, Mainz Art Weekend, Catalog
- Art Fair Salzburg, (A), Catalog
- Design Gallery Lisa Daun, Mainz, SS
- Galerie jottwedee, Gau-Bischofsheim