Thomas Schütte

Westkunstmodelle 1:1

16 September 2023 - 4 February 2024
work in collection

^{_{© Thomas Schütte, Schiff (Modell 1:20), 1980, foto: Candida Höfer, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2023}}

More than forty years after he first envisioned them, Thomas Schütte will now see three of his architectural models from the legendary Westkunst exhibition (1981) take shape at full scale. This autumn, De Pont Museum will display three works from this artist – a core maker in its collection – in the main gallery of the former woollen mill. The pieces (Schiff, Bühne and Kiste) will invite visitors to climb stairs, stand on a stage or retreat into a hidden interior space. Over the past four decades, Schütte has built an oeuvre that is one of the most influential and yet elusive in contemporary art. The Westkunstmodelle mark the starting point for both his oeuvre and this exhibition, which offers a retrospective of his architectural models from the 1980s to the present. The architectural models also serve as a connecting link within Schütte’s incredibly diverse body of work: they bring together, in concentrated form, the wide-ranging visual forms and themes that characterise his artistic practice.