"Two exhibitions by Joachim Schmid"
2001-08-11 until 2001-10-13
Museum of Contemporary Photography
Chicago, IL, USA

PICTURES FROM THE STREET, and STATICS both by prominent German artist Joachim Schmid, both containing media collected on the street and in his mailbox.He then arranges the media into fantastic visual archives.

For almost twenty years, Joachim Schmid (Germany, born 1955) has collected photographs found on the street. Nearly all of these discarded or lost images depict people in family snapshots that were never intended for public display. Schmids sequencing of the pictures, combined with the weathered and damaged appearance of the photographs themselves, creates a fascinating visual archive that suggests particular stories that cannot be read with any certainty.

Schmids installation Statics is made from collections of materials that in some way depend on the photograph, such as film stills, and invitation card for photography exhibitions, baseball cards and even fine art photographs. Schmid selects a particular category of material, such as gallery invitation cards, and puts them through an office paper shredder. He then mounts the resulting strips on board.Creating abstract collages whose meaning and aethetic values no longer reference the materials used to make the image. The unique collages vary according to the size of the collection shredded.

IMAGE:
Pictures from the Street, No. 217, Los Angeles, March, 1994
chromogenic development print
5 x 3 inches
Courtesy the artist

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of Illinois

Other Important Exhibitions in Chicago