Gregor Schneider is renowned for his unnerving presentation of normality, in which his chosen medium – the domestic room – becomes the site of an unrelenting existential confrontation.
Schneider’s compelling and ongoing project is Haus Ur, the ever-changing construction and reproduction of the interior of his childhood home in Rheydt, Germany. Reconstructed in the German Pavilion at the 2001 Venice Biennale as Dead House Ur, this work earned Schneider the Golden Lion for sculpture. Die Familie Schneider, the artist’s first major ‘house’ work outside Germany, was commissioned by Artangel and presented in London in the Autumn of 2004.
Schneider has referenced spaces that are well beyond the domestic sphere: including a religious centre (the Caaba in Mecca) a red-light district (Steindamm, Hamburg) and the maximum-security internment facility on Cuba (Camp V, Guantanamo Bay).