REMIXED

Stefan Schuster, remixed by Gitte Schäfer, #1, 2008, mixed media on paper, 20,99 x 29,77 cm

remixed A project by Stefan Schuster Opening Friday, September 5, 2008, 6:00 pm September 06 - October 18, 2008 Tuesday - Saturday 12 - 6 pm The Berlin-based artist Stefan Schuster has invited the following artists to rework his original drawings (ink on tracing paper, A4 format): Matthew Antezzo (USA), Michael Baers (USA), Raphael Danke (D), Sean Gallaghar (CAN), Gregor Hildebrandt (D), Jacob Dahl Jürgensen (DK), Rufus Kraus (D), Dan Rees (UK), Gitte Schäfer (D), Cornelia Schmidt-Bleek (D), Thomas Seidemann (D), Annika Ström (S), Katja Strunz (D), Alexander Wolff (D), Christine Würmell (D) and special guest Herbert Achternbusch (D). Schuster¹ s drawings are based on an abstract and reduced use of line, which leaves lots of room for interpretation. All of the invited artists were requested to select three to four drawings to use as their original and to rework them without any additional instructions. This form of artistic teamwork taps familiar strategies of artistic production: both the idea of cooperation i.e., the joint creation of a work of art, and processes that use given artworks to readdress and reconsider contexts or issues that have already been negotiated. However, remixed actually subverts the idea of cooperation, since it is not about a joint working process‹in the sense of working at the same time or agreeing on content. Instead, it reveals a sequential working process, in which the original work is in danger of being painted over, distorted or made unrecognizable. The project also calls to mind modes of production implemented by artists who have inspired the notions of the appropriation and transformation of a work of art by painting over it. Stefan Schuster¹s remixed takes this process a step further, because the artist invites others to continue or rework the original. The results range from a careful extension of the given abstract structure to a juxtaposition and montage of additional visual components or figural ensembles that merely use the dimensions of the given form as a starting point. Schuster¹s strategy raises question as to the destruction or modification of an already existing work; it calls for a reexamination of terms such as ³original,² ³creator² or ³author.² remixed is thus the latest of a series of projects, in which Schuster draws on his artist network. Over the past few years he has engaged in this kind of exchange through book projects, and in 2007 he began to take it into the third dimension. Last fall he organized the three-day exhibition pimp my walls, which featured 48 artists, in his cleared-out apartment. The only thing that the artists had in common was their acquaintance with the exhibition organizer. Using the same concept, he invited a large number of Berlin artists to take part in the exhibition Freunde und Bekannte (Friends and Acquaintances), whose works he then installed in the exhibition space. The exhibition remixed once again leaves the arrangement of the finished works to Schuster. Bringing together the reworked originals ultimately raises the question to what extent the ³handwriting² of the inviting artist is recognizable as a common thread running throughout the presented works. Stefan Schuster * 1970 in Austria, lives and works in Berlin.