Erik Schmidt: Retreat

When asked about the role of the paradise in his work, Erik Schmidt answers his interviewer Adriano Sack: “ Trying to stage life as a paradise is an important motivator for me. Whenever I go somewhere, I feel this total fascination, even if it’ s only a palm beach.” Erik Schmidt creates works that explore symbolic processes within various social systems. The immersion into foreign contexts plays an important role in his paintings, videos, photographs and drawings. Be it in the crowded cityscape of Tokyo, in the camps of the American Occupy movement, with wine and olive farmers in the West Bank, in aristocratic hunting circles of his North Rhine-Westphalian homeland, or under the umbrella of mighty palm trees – Schmidt is an observer and tends to deliberately assume the role of the outsider. This detached attitude provides him with insight into group dynamic processes, but also allows him to unravel a wide variety of cliché s, stereotypes, codes, rituals, norms, patterns, and conventions. And at the end of a long series of works there are now palm trees: “ They are square and in the middle is the nut.”

Bjö rn Vedder, Dr. phil. (born in 1976), lives as a publicist and curator in Munich. His work deals with philosophy, contemporary art and literature. Erik Schmidt (born 1968 in Herford) lives and works in Berlin. He has participated in group and solo exhibitions at institutions such as Kunsthalle Hamburg, Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin, Artists Space New York, MARTa Herford, Museum Morsbroich Leverkusen, KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin, Matsumoto City Museum of Art, and Museum der Moderne in Salzburg. In the US he is collected by the Rubell Family Collection Miami; in Spain by Funcació la CAIXA Barcelona, Museo Reina Sofí a Madrid, CGAC Santiago de Compostela, in Japan Taguchi Art Collection Tokyo. Pier Paolo Pancotto is the curator of La Fondazione, Rome and of the Art Club exhibition programme at Acadé mie de France à Rome, Villa Medici (2016-present). He has curated, among others, the Fortezzuola exhibition series (Museo Pietro Canonica, Rome, 2016– 18) and exhibition projects at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Estorick collection, London; Galleria nazionale d’ arte moderna, Rome; Museo H. C. Andersen, Rome; Museo Carlo Bilotti, Rome. At Arte Fiera 2020, he was a member of the jury for the Wide Art Award. Traudi Messini was born in Mannheim, studied art history in Munich and today works as a publicist for various print media, radio and television stations in Bolzano, South Tyrol. She is the author of numerous artist portraits, co-founded the Mediaart production coop and is responsible for the TV women's magazine dF on the RAI South Tyrol channel. Adriano Sack (born 1967) is a German writer and journalist. He was editor-in-chief of BMW Magazine from 2013– 2016. Since October 2015, he has been head of the “ Style” department at the German Sunday’ s paper Welt am Sonntag.