Rolf Schneider

Pleiades

16 February to 14 April 2002

Installation, objects and sculptures.
In cooperation with the Heidelberger Kunstverein and Zollverein exhibitions Gesellschaft für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Essen.
Introduction Annette Tietenberg, Frankfurt.

His central work in the Kunstverein "Plejaden" is a floor relief of about 45 square meters made of several hundred blue glass plates with nine yellow stars. Like a section of the firmament with the aforementioned constellation, it stretches across the floor and "turns us upside down".
"According to the recognized laws of flight mechanics, the bumblebee cannot fly because of its shape and weight in comparison to the wing surface. But the bumblebee does not know this and flies anyway."
This sentence was the starting point, title and component of an installation staged by Rolf Schneider in 1996. Who did this sentence, which like most of the materials and prefabricated parts used by Schneider is a found object, not remind us of the story of Peter who wanted to walk on the lake and fell into the water just at the moment when he realized that what he was about to do was completely impossible?
Access to what is already there is part of his concept. The art history of the ready made, the objet trouvé, the securing of evidence is one of the prerequisites of Schneider's art, just like that of Minimal Art and Constructivism, which then, however, goes beyond such models in an idiosyncratic way. His constructive approach never runs the risk of dogmatic paralysis, for he wants nothing to do with the "cemeteries of Constructivism".
Schneider has introduced new materials, explored the theme of "movement", incorporating yellow and blue glass, lipstick, Tippex and narrative elements, often in conjunction with letters or text fragments. But the focus is still on the relationship between object and surrounding space. It is never about the object alone.
In many conversations Rolf Schneider has described the "invention" of Euclid's space as the most important achievement of the human mind. It is an abstraction in which something was created that does not exist in nature, but which is nevertheless completely rooted in nature. It is based on the logic of the right angle, the anthropological and cosmological reference to the horizontal and vertical, to anatomy, behaviour, action and perception of the human being, to his standing, sitting and lying, his being related to the horizon and his need to find support in a system of order that encounters the unmeasurable infinity.

Catalogue

Supported by the city of Neuenhaus and the state of Lower Saxony.