"It seems to me that the more you find out, the more questions there are;
the more you know, the more unknown things become..."
-Gregor Schneider
"Schneider dislikes explaining his work. He very seldom gives interviews. Long silences fall: his mouth hanging open and empty as he hunts for the right words. You can well imagine the interview that got him out of National Service in the Army - they asked him how he had been spending his time and he tried to tell them about his interest in walls. Even his smile looks upside down.
In his work - in Dead House Ur, for instance, or in his still-to-be-fulfilled “room in which to die” - he is interested, he says, “in the unknown: in the hidden places which I can no longer feel or hear or smell”.
“I wanted to find the point when my art was surrounding me completely but, at the same time, I could no longer recognise it... I wanted to look at the moment that a dying person ceases perceiving. I wanted to think about that transition point. It seems to me that the more you find out, the more questions there are; the more you know, the more unknown things become. And what is more unknown than death?"
taken from article here..
""Making is a higher form of thinking," claims Gregor Schneider, who began to "make" art as an adolescent. So urgent was his desire to be an artist that, in order to pay for the materials he needed to make his sculptures, he even worked as a gravedigger. Introverted, self-effacing, and a close observer of human behavior--with a particular passion for the lowliest of social categories--Schneider has developed an all-absorbing identification with his work, living together with it night and day in an apartment he soundproofed from the rest of the world. Schneider has tried his hand at film, painting, and sculpture, but most remarkable is the installation he created between 1985 and 1994, in his home. There he built rooms within rooms, walls in front of walls, doors that led nowhere and windows that opened onto dead spaces. When questioned about his motivations, he would defiantly proclaim, "I can't do anything else."
from amazon here..
(listen to burger and voigt here...) via motel de moka..