carlier | gebauer is pleased to present a solo exhibition by German artist Erik Schmidt.

If paint once served to depict landscapes and cityscapes, it has now become, in Erik Schmidt’s work, an amplifier of the metropolis’s latent, dynamic energy. Within Schmidt’s practise, this behaviour of oil paint exudes a complexity of attributes and attitudes — a kind of personality, which echoes that of urban phenomenology itself. This resonance between technique and subject-matter has for years constituted his work’s mimetic spark. In one sense, the videos he has long made, like the photographs upon which he now paints, are evince a cool detachment from their subject the city. At the same time, the work is warmed by comedic self awareness, and a richly embodied relationship to medium: grainy film, slick video, lush paint.