Interview with Gregor Schneider: The loneliness of the wax fruits

From February 26, 2022, Esch, the second largest city in Luxembourg with a population of 36,000, will be the European Capital of Culture. After the decline of this industry in Europe and the closure of most of the blast furnaces, the former coal and steel-burning metropolis found itself in free fall: high unemployment, deterioration of the infrastructure, devastating environmental damage from iron ore mining, which literally left behind scorched red earth, as the extracted earth was high in phosphorus "Minette" ores colored the entire ground around Esch deep red through oxidation, ultimately no money for culture and the escape of young people from the city. With the exception of the former, everything seems to be changing for the better at the moment: The huge blast furnaces have been extensively renovated,When dining in ambitious restaurants and bistros, one looks at the impressively illuminated silhouette of the former industrial giants with their facilities up to forty meters high. In the midst of the tangle of gigantic tubes and cooling spirals, which look like a built painting by Konrad Klapheck, there is a hyper-modern university library, which confidently underlines the desire to become the European Capital of Culture. Many of the charming Art Nouveau buildings of the Val d'Alzette settlement conglomerate, which was elevated to a city only around 1900 due to the huge iron ore deposits and the consequent settlement of thousands of guest workers, were spruced up. For the effect of the installations by Gregor Schneider,who has become one of the most famous artists in Germany with his parents' "house ur" in Rheydt, which has now been permanently secured, and his much-discussed "death room", which has been converted into an accessible memorial sculpture, it is almost fortunate that the Escher retrospective does not hold almost all of his works takes place in a highly polished museum room. Schneider has arranged his most important works on five floors under the title “Ego-Tunnel” in a gutted furniture store from the sixties, which forms an exciting cocoon for the fundamental eeriness of his installations and the leitmotif confrontation with death.that the Escher retrospective of almost all of his works does not take place in a highly polished museum room. Schneider has arranged his most important works on five floors under the title “Ego-Tunnel” in a gutted furniture store from the sixties, which forms an exciting cocoon for the fundamental eeriness of his installations and the leitmotif confrontation with death.that the Escher retrospective of almost all of his works does not take place in a highly polished museum room. Schneider has arranged his most important works on five floors under the title “Ego-Tunnel” in a gutted furniture store from the sixties, which forms an exciting cocoon for the fundamental eeriness of his installations and the leitmotif confrontation with death.

Stefan Trinks

Editor in the features section.

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Mr. Schneider, why do we meet for an interview in a former furniture store?

Gregor Schneider: Here an institution was built out of nowhere, and very, very quickly.

A former furniture store has been gutted, and it is now a good idea to equip the wallless floors with rooms architecturally.

Will everything be architecturally easier to change in the private future?

I also work in museums that are built as splendid buildings, and that is also exciting because the appropriate space can be added.

But most of them are not so easy to change in terms of architecture or content.

With its interiors, a furniture store is built artificiality. There are wax fruits and false book spines, suspended ceilings and wandering walls - that should have come close to you, who are reconstructing existing rooms using the black and romantic doppelganger principle. Was that an additional attraction or was it rather difficult, since you reproduce exactly to the centimeter and have given room dimensions?

I tried to find the distance to it and worked less with the material.

I already had an apartment with several floors in the past.

In its current state, the furniture store is reminiscent of a building that has been gutted except for the shell.

Five days before the exhibition opened, there weren't even any handrails.

In this way, the house can of course be changed more easily, both formally and in terms of content, than museums that are set up for certain forms of art.

And it's also exciting that you go there more than once, just like in a shop.