Dierk Schmidt (1965) practices a contextual notion of painting that places great emphasis on research in historical and in particular in “factual space”. A recent series of abstract pictures focuses on the Berlin Africa Conference of 1884/85 from an international rights perspective. A second series uses the module of the museum vitrine–so to speak in a painting with other means–to treat the axes of gaze and discourse in (post)colonial argumentation as well as their power of appropriation and formulas of conflicting claims to possession in relation to objects in ethnological collections.
Publications and Essays (selected):
“SIEV-X – Zu einem Fall verschärfter Flüchtlingspolitik, Ein Bildzyklus in drei Teilen, Gespräche und Texte,” Berlin, 2005; “The Division of the Earth – Tableaux on the Legal Synopses of the Berlin Africa Conference,” Cologne, 2010; “Dierk Schmidt: Guilt and Debts,” exhibition catalog Museo Reina Sofia / Palacio de Velázquez, Madrid, 2018.
“History Image vs. History Painting,” in: Painting. The Implicit Horizon, Maastricht, 2012; “Afterlives: German and European Postcoloniality. Artefacts, Museums, Art,” in: Darkmatter Online, ed. Artefakte//anti-humboldt, 2013; “Comments on the art and research project The Division of the Earth – Tableaux on the Legal Synopses of the Berlin Africa Conference” (with Malte Jaguttis), in: Open Arts Journal, Nr. 3, 2014.
Exhibitions/exhibition participation (selelcted):
“Guilt and Debts,” Museo Reina Sofia / Palacio Velázquez, Madrid, Spain, 2018; “Hello World. Revising a Collection,” Hamburger Bahnhof / Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, 2018; “Broken Windows 6.3,” KOW, Berlin, 2016; “Animism,” OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shenzhen, China 2013, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2012; “Image Leaks – Zur Bildpolitik der Ressource,” Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt a.M., 2011; SIEV-X – Zu einem Fall verschärfter Flüchtlingspolitik oder Géricault und die Konstruktion von Geschichte, Städel-Museum, Frankfurt am Main 2009; documenta 12, Kassel 2007; I. Trienal de Luanda, Angola 2007.