Bielefelder Kunstverein

In his art and his photography, Arne Schmitt expresses his interest in the public sphere, and particularly in bodies of architecture and in urban structures. With his images, he investigates the ideological content of post-war reconstruction in Germany and the structural organisation of new urban living spaces, as well as the current situation of West German architecture and its materiality. Alongside his own photographs, a considerable component of his extensive series are the texts he authors and his reproductions of specific historical publications, all of which are contrasted with each other in a complex process of montage and selection.

Schmitt’s solo exhibition at the Bielefelder Kunstverein is now focussing on a new series of photos with the title, »Ursprung Gebrauch Überhöhung« (2017/2018) [Origin Usage Exaltation]. He begins with the omnipresence of volcanic rock in the way towns and villages in the East-Eifel region around Mayen look and goes into the quarrying and trading of basalt, together with its cultural significance.

As a pivot to the exhibition on the Kunstverein’s upper floor, a further work has come about, which relates Schmitt’s reflections on basalt to the work of the German historian, Reinhart Koselleck, who, for his part, pursued a very specific photographic praxis as part of his research.

Arne Schmitt, born in Mayen in 1984, lives and works in Cologne. He previously had solo exhibitions in, among other places, the Munich Stadtmuseum (2018), the Galerie Jacky Strenz in Frankfurt (2017) and the Galerie K‘ in Bremen (2016). Schmitt has taken part in numerous group exhibitions at, among others, the Sprengel Museum Hanover (2018), the Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie in Mannheim (2017), the Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach (2016) and in the context of the photography award of the Wüstenrot Foundation in Essen (2015).