Grids and Threads
414 Butter Lane, Bridgehampton NY 11932.
* Please note that we are on the end of a long driveway, so our house and garden are not visible from the road.
The project ‘Grids and Threads’ is a minimalist meditation on the concept of white space and it’s perception.
It is inspired by Marcel Duchamp's ‘Three Standard Stoppages’, in which three imaginary measuring devices underline the arbitrariness to qualify and quantify something.
On one hand conceptual photography is used in a series of created installations, where the sense of scale becomes a riddle. Objects and colorful markers markers are photographed in the snow from a bird’s eye perspective, using the white environment as a blank canvas. The installations were built with recycled fabrics and colored threads.
It is a continuation of Schmidt’s artistic search for concepts of space and systems that define them, which she originally showcased in her book ‘Topography of Quiet’.
I will be creating for the Driveby Project an ephemeral ouside installation with bamboo, strings and thread, going back to my childhood in Greece, which inspired me to work with old and recycled materials.
Bastienne Schmidt is a multi-disciplinary artist who explores through photography, painting and drawing, concepts of identity and place. Photography and art fall for Schmidt into the realm of archeology, exploring layers of history and meaning, and reassigning value to them. Schmidt was born in Munich, Germany and moved to Greece at the age of 9 with her family. She spent her childhood surrounded by her father’s archeological work, which instilled in her a desire to organize, map, and attempt to understand systems through her artwork.
Schmidt’s work is included in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the International Center of Photography, the Brooklyn Museum, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C., and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, among others. Her work was shown in a one-person exhibition at the International Center of Photography in New York, The Museum fuer Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, and the Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach, Florida. Six monographs of her long-term art projects have been published, among them Vivir la Muerte, 1996; American Dreams, 1998; Shadowhome, 2004; Home Stills, 2012; Topography of Quiet, 2014; and Typology of Women, 2016.
http://www.bastienneschmidt.com/