Beschreibung:

Thomas Schütte Sechs Geister (Schwartz) 1995 bronze (in 6 parts) biggest 50.8 x 21.6 x 16.5 cm. (20 x 8 1/2 x 6 1/2 in.); smallest 43.2 x 20.3 x 17.8 cm. (17 x 8 x 7 in.) Each incised 'T.S. 3/6' on the reverse of right foot and'KAVSER D'DORF' on the reverse of left foot. This work is number 3 from an edition of 6.
Provenance Acquired directly from the artist Donald Young Gallery, Chicago Exhibited Chicago, Donald Young Gallery, Kleine Geister, 21 May - 9 July 2010 (another edition exhibited) Literature Thomas Schutte: Big Buildings Models and Views 1980-2010, Exh. Cat.,Cologne, 2010, p. 187 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay “Art can change the view. It can change the mind. Potentially it is enlightenment, not entertainment.” - Thomas Schütte With his dynamic and virtuosic handling of a multifarious range of media, German artist Thomas Schütte has established himself as one of the most prominent sculptors of his generation. As student of celebrated painter Gerhard Richter at the Düsseldorf Kunstakademiee, Schütte learned to experiment with painting and has since then exhibited a wide range of works in different media at various select institutions, such as the New Museum, the Venice Biennale, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the National Gallery in London, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Sechs Geister, executed in 1995, demonstrates the creative materiality that characterises much of the artist’s oeuvre and is paradigmatic of the sculptures that form his definitive series of Geister works. Ghostly, fluid, and strikingly evocative, they are at once humorous and sinister, serving as an impenetrable reflection on the human condition. Comprised of a group of six, the small figures are positioned in a sequence of movements that, though distinctly human, simultaneously allude to a whimsical and mechanised quality. In fact, it is this toy like aspect of the figures that make them enticing and playful yet slightly menacing. Sechs Geister taps directly into “the uncanny,” a psychological concept theorized by eminent psychologist Sigmund Freud at the turn of the twentieth century. Derived from the German term for “home,” the uncanny is anything that is at once familiar but simultaneously strange or threatening. In fact, it is precisely this familiarity that makes uncanny things so unnerving. Freud explicates that we fear figures of the uncanny because these, by virtue of resembling us, ultimately have the power to replace us, that is, to become our usurpers. This is why Freud lists dolls, ghosts, and the doppelganger as paragons of the uncanny. By extension, the uncanny is anything that blurs the distinction between the original and the copy, the live being and the inanimate object. Schütte’s art clearly seeks to straddle the line between the animate and inanimate and thus develops an uncanny aura. Through its multiplications of figures and even its title, Sechs Geister further channels the power of the uncanny and, in this fashion, aligns itself, conceptually if not formally, with a long history of avant-garde art. Surrealism, the art movement of the uncanny par excellence, produced a string of artworks that mobilized the uncanny. Recall, for example, surrealist artist Hans Bellmer’s eerie photographic images of doubled doll limbs or Frida Kahlo’s famous self-portraits of two versions of herself. Schütte’s concern with the profoundly human reveals itself in this work’s ability to activate the psychological side of its viewers. Overall, the sextet represents a synthesis of the otherworldly, the fantastical, and the altogether ambiguous, possessing an irrefutable wit, captivating mysteriousness, and aesthetic charm that stem from Schütte’s masterful manipulation of scale and material. Their physicality and sense of movement also directly communicate the artist’s long-standing concern with humanity and the manner in which it can be represented through art. The carefully composed, almost balletic, gestures of the Sechs Geister reveal his significant preoccupation with figuration, and in particular, the body’s ability to express itself through movement and pose. As with all of the artist’s work, Sechs Geister reflects Schütte’s formal ingenuity and artistic independence, his joy of materiality