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2/7/2014

Gregor Schneider

Synagoge Stommeln, Pulheim

curated by Angelika Schallenberg

The synagogue in Stommeln, today a part of the City of Pulheim, is one of the few synagogues in Germany that were neither damaged during the pogroms of 1938 nor razed during the urban renewal surge that started in the 1970s. The "Synagoge Stommeln" project was founded in 1990 in order to do justice to the synagogue's significance, and to generate public awareness of this historic site. Each year, the Culture Department of the City of Pulheim asks one artist of acclaim to develop an artwork that interacts with this place—including its architecture, its history. Jannis Kounellis, Richard Serra, Rosemarie Trockel, Santiago Sierra and Daniel Buren were among the participating artists.

In July, the exhibition series will continue with its next oeuvre, "Hauptstrasse 85 a" by Gregor Schneider. Schneider will be the first artist to involve the entire building in an architectonic approach. His intervention makes the original synagogue vanish, and thus inquires into the presence and absence of the religious sphere. Moreover, he assigns a proprietary address to this "lost place," which did not use to have a postal address.

About the artist
Gregor Schneider's architectural art counts among the most important artistic positions of our day and age. In 1985, Schneider began to expand and convert an apartment building in Mönchengladbach-Rheydt. This building, renamed "Haus u r" (for Unterheydener Strasse in Rheydt), became his best known project, and the germinating cell for his entire creative work to come. Schneider has also worked with rooms in galleries and museums since the early 1990s, inserting structures or remodelling them and thereby changing them into three-dimensional walk-in sculptures that made the original rooms vanish. His fixtures often replicate the original rooms, so that their form, function, and appearance become indistinguishable, not least because they are all fully functional and inhabitable.

In 2001, Schneider transplanted 24 rooms from the building "Haus u r" in Rheydt to the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and his oeuvre "Dead House u r Venice 2001" went on to win the Golden Lion for Sculpture at the 49th Biennale.

He also caused a stir with his projects Dying Room, which was realised following extended controversies at Kunstraum Innsbruck in 2011 and was shown again at the National Museum of Szczecin in 2013, and Cube, an enormous cube inspired by the Kaaba in Mecca and developed for the Biennale in Venice 2005 and later for Berlin in 2006 (in front of Hamburger Bahnhof), but rejected just before the exhibition opened. In 2009, Gregor Schneider was given tenure as professor for sculpture at the Berlin University of the Arts, and in 2012 became a professor at the Art Academy in Munich.

Hauptstrasse 85 a is sponsored by the Ministry of Family, Children, Youth, Culture and Sport of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Image: Graveyard and ruins of the parish church of Alt-Otzenrath, 2008. Open cast mining Garzweiler. © Gregor Schneider / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

Press contact: Kathrin Luz, Kathrin Luz Communication
T +49 171 3102472/ kl@neumann-luz.de

Opening: July 3, 2014, 7pm. Introduction: Ulrich Loock

Synagoge Stommeln
Hauptstrasse 85 a - 50259 Pulheim
Opening hours through 26 October:
Fridays 3–6pm
Saturdays and Sundays noon–6pm
Thereafter upon arrangement

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