Andreas Schröder

 

Curators: Vered Hadad, Hili Greenfeld

 

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June 2016

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Schröder, born 1983 in Kazakhstan, is a graduate of the Mainz Academy in design and photography and currently an MFA student in videography in Leipzig. The exhibition consists of a site-specific installation planned over the last year and constructed in situ during his residence at the gallery.

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The installation consists of 32 tree trunks spread through the gallery upon which Schröder placed books that deal with religious, symbolic and geopolitical aspects of Jerusalem. In his work, Schröder often comes back to books as objects that preserve tradition and history, seeking to explore their material and tactile nature.

 

Besides the trunks is a collection of books the artists gathered from the streets of the city, various vendors and used book stores. These books have gone through a series of experimental processes including boiling

in Dead Sea water. The process dissolved the ink, stuck pages together and left beautiful traces of salt crystalization, thus preserving the material of the books while dissolving their content. Salt serves here as an agent of both preservation and destruction. A third piece of the installation is a video of the artist burying religious Jewish volume that he found with a hole burned through it. Schröder was fascinated by the person who burned the book and decided to give the book a proper burial besides one of his favorite trees in Jersusalem. The burial refers to the practice of Genizah, the burial of Jewish relogious texts. the artist feels that he thus preserved the book and returned it to

its source. He claims that books, and the memory contained therein, are like seeds that will sprout given the proper care. Burial thus becomes also a planting and resurrection.

 

Schröder, who was raised as a Baptist Christian, has maintained a dialogue with Jerusalem since childhood. He remembers the childish sense of anxiety regarding the coming judgement day that would take place in Jerusalem. In 2009 he first arrived in Jerusalem as an exchange student at the Bezalel Academy of Art and spent a year studying the complexities of the city and the interrelation of different faiths here. The conflict between physical proximity and spiritual distance led him, when he returned to Germany, to leave the church and the tradition he was raised in.

 

The religious volumes embody for him the laws and paradigms of religion and church, and the tension between his love for the books and his wish to disconnect from them leads to actions which focus on the material – ink, paper, trees and earth – preserving material while destroying content.

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The title of the exhibition is taken from William Blake  “Jerusalem- the Emanation of the Giant Albion”. For Blake, Jerusalem is a symbol of redemption and light against the forces of evil, as in Schröder's youth,

here the city represents a paradise, a place of love and peace, contrasting with his experiences in the actual Jerusalem.

Andreas Schröder (1983) lives and works in Leipzig. Studied photography and design at the Mainz Academy, participated in student exchange in Bezalel Academy of art, studied religion at Postdam University and is currently an MFA student in Leipzig. Schröder managed the Zuständige Behörde gallery in Leipzig (2015-2016), showed in a two artist exhibition at the Leipzig Art Academy (2015), participated in the photography project “Bike Ride from Germany to Kazakhstan” that dealt with German citizens from the former USSR (2012). he has shown works in various group exhibitions in Leipzig, at the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz at Mühfeld + Storer in Frankfurt and in Dresden.