Gregor Schneider

Within the Biennale the work has also been interpreted as a subtle political declaration, because the German pavilion building from 1909 has been often considered as the most "intimidating" building "in the area of the Giardini".

Gregor Schneider (born 1969 in Rheydt) is a German artist.

His projects have proven controversial and provoked intense discussions.

Since the middle of the 1980s visitors of the Haus u r have been reported as having had frightening experiences inside the house.

In 1985 he began dismantling and rebuilding rooms in an apartment building in Rheydt, which he entitled, Haus u r.

Since 1985, Schneider has been working elaborately on the house on Unterheydener Strasse in Mönchengladbach's Rheydt district.

The "u r" refers to Unterheydener Strasse und Rheydt.

Gregor Schneider created replicas of the existing rooms by building complete rooms inside of other rooms each consisting of walls, ceilings and floors.

These doubled rooms are not visible as rooms within rooms to the viewers.

Additionally, he slowly moves the rooms out of sight by employing machines that push ceilings or complete rooms.

Hollow and interspaces are the results of the form of the installations.

Some rooms become inaccessible because they are hidden behind walls and some have been isolated by concrete, plumbing, insulation or sound-absorbing materials.

Via outside fixed lamps, different times of the day have been simulated.

The rooms are numbered consecutively (u r 1 -) for a clear distinction.

In the beginning, the originals rooms have been all areas of a house: a bedroom, a coffee room, a lumber-room, a kitchen, a corridor, a cellar.

Gregor Schneider studied from 1989 to 1992 at several German Art Academies including the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Art Academy of Düsseldorf) and at Kunstakademie Münster (Academy of Fine Arts Münster), and at the Hochschule für bildende Künste (University of Fine Arts Hamburg).

Since the beginning of the 1990s he has worked with rooms in galleries and museums.

He conceives the rooms as the-dimensional, sculptures that can be walked through, which oftentimes hide or alter the existing gallery- and museum rooms; the rooms he works with are existing rooms he finds in different dwellings or domestic buildings.

From 1999 to 2003, he served as a guest professor / educational activities at several art schools, including De Ateliers in Amsterdam, the Academy of Fine Arts Hamburg, and De Ateliers in Amsterdam, the Academy of Fine Arts Hamburg and at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen.

In 2001, he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for his infamous work Totes Haus u r exhibited at the German Pavilion.

In 2001, Gregor Schneider won the "Golden Lion" at the 49th Biennale in Venice, with his solo exhibition, "Totes Haus u r Venedig 2001".

Udo Kittelmann, at that time, director of the Kölnischen Kunstverein invited the artist to create solo exhibition in the German pavilion.

Within three months time Schneider built a Totes Haus u r inside the pavilion, he transported by ship a total of 24 original rooms using100 packing pieces with a combined weight of 150 tons from Rheydt to Venice; Schneider refers to the rooms, which he has built out of the Haus u r or which have been rebuilt at another place, as Totes Haus u r.

Schneider rebuilt the rooms inside the German pavilion into a similar house with double walls and double floors on the ground in a house just as he did in Rheydt.

In 2003, the Tote Haus u r was constructed for one year inside the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles.

In 2005, Gregor Schneider was officially invited to realize the Cube Venice 2005 at the Piazza di San Marco in Venice during the 2005 Biennale.

Shortly before the opening of the exhibition, the sculpture was rejected due to its "political nature".

Cube Venice 2005 was intended to be an independent sculpture in form, function and appearance, inspired by the Kaaba in Mecca, the holiest place of Islam, the destination of millions of believers who make the pilgrimage every year.

Kaaba means "cubic building".

This artwork became an international controversy discussed widely in the media.

As a result, it was rejected shortly before being realized in the courtyard of the Hamburger Bahnhof, museum of contemporary art in Berlin.

Finally, Schneider realized his work Cube Hamburg 2007 between the old and new buildings of the Hamburger Kunsthalle.

From 2009 to 2012 he was a professor of sculpting at the University of Art Berlin and from 2012 to 2016 a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich.

In 2015, Gregor Schneider was elected to the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts.

Since 2016 he is a follower of Tony Cragg at Arts Academy Düsseldorf as a professor of sculpting.

In May 2018, Schneider was elected as a new member of the Visual Arts Section on the Berlin Academy of Arts.

At the age of 16, Schneider had his first solo exhibition entitled, Pubertäre Verstimmung, at the gallery Kontrast in Mönchengladbach.

He remodeled a late 19th-century entrance with columns as standard door entrance with a letterbox-slot and aged doorbell panels on the side.

Inside windows could not be opened to the outside.

"One builds what one no longer knows", Schneider commented about his installation.