Gregor Schneider - Contemporary Art London Friday, October 13, 2006 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Skulpturengalerie Löhrl am Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach

  • Catalogue Essay

    The present lot, Nacht (Night), Totes Haus ur, 2001 is a small fragment of the massive installation of Gregor Schneider’s larger work Haus ur. Literally reconstructing his own house within his house piece-by-piece, Schneider created a work of art in commemoration of his childhood home in Rheydt. This project lasted over ten years and was only seen by the artist’s close friends and family members who dared venture into the surreal world that was Schneider’s house. In a painstaking process, Schneider dismantled the majority of his home and rebuilt it as an installation entitled Totes Haus ur, exhibited in the German Pavilion at the XXXXIX Venice Biennale in 2001, for which he was awarded the Golden Lion award.

    In a 1995 interview on Haus ur project, Schneider was asked what drove him to construct new rooms within existing rooms. The artist replied, “I’m not interested in the room itself. The first time I built a room, I had no idea that’s what I had done. It was someone else that told me… I was interested in freewheeling actions. I was interested in heading for some neutral point that I myself cannot know. Moments like that only arise through chance. The not-consciously-perceptible motion of things and the different times of day produce what I call an unknowable space of time. And so a place comes into being that can’t be a place; a sense of something that we don’t know. Maybe someone comes in because the door was left open or they have been invited. They drink a cup of coffee with me. We have a boring conversation, they leave again, and don’t even wonder why they were there in the first place.” (G. Schneider quoted in P. Schimmel, Dead House ur, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, October 12, 2003- Summer 2004)

50

Nacht (Night), Totes Haus Ur

2001
Wood, glass, and paint on wooden support.
53 x 42 1/2 x 1 3/8 in. (134.6 x 108 x 3.5 cm).
Signed, titled and dated “Nacht Totes Haus ur 2001 Schneider” on the reverse.

Estimate
£20,000 - 30,000 

Sold for £62,400

Contemporary Art

14 Oct 2006, 7pm
London