Bastienne Schmidt is a German born, Bridgehampton and New York based multimedia artist. As an artist she explores concepts of identity and place through photography and painting.
Schmidt was born in Munich, Germany and moved at the age of 9 with her family to Greece. 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. Photography and art fall for Schmidt into the realm of archeology, exploring layers of history and meaning, and reassigning value to them.
Her photographic work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the International Center of Photography,The Brooklyn Museum in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, among others.
Her work has been shown extensively in exhibitions around the world and received the Kodak Award in 1996. Six monographs of her art work have been published in the past 20 years.
With her latest project Grids and Threads Bastienne Schmidt provides a minimalist meditation on the concept of white space and it’s perception.
The work is inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s “Three Standard Stoppages,” in which three imaginary measuring devices underline the arbitrariness to qualify and quantify something. Objects and colorful markers are photographed in the snow from a bird’s eye perspective, using the white environment as a blank canvas.
She uses conceptual photography and works with temporary installations of threads, sticks and cloth as a tool that she will document through video and photography.
It is a continuation of her artistic quest of concepts of space and systems that define them.
In Process @ The Watermill Center invites the community to engage with our Artists-in-Residence on Saturday afternoons through open rehearsals, workshops, studio visits, lectures or artist talks.
Watermill’s mission is to provide artists and thinkers the opportunity to focus on the development of their work and practice. Artists-in-Residence have gone on to perform at venues and festivals including the New Museum, Roulette, PS122, American Realness, Clocktower Gallery, Performa, Vienna’s Donaufestival, Kampnagel in Hamburg, CPR – Center for Performance Research, and the Baryshnikov Arts Center.
May 12, 2018
photos © Maria Baranova-Suzuki
