Veronika Schneider: Art for Animal

german version

VERONIKA SCHNEIDER – WELL TENDED COMPOUNDS –FIVE SCENARIOS FOR LIVING SPACE FOR HUMAN BEINGS CONFORMING WITH THE REQUIREMENTS OF OUR SPECIES –ACCESSIBLE AND USABLE

Veronika Schneider was born 1980 in Dachau. She studied creative sculpture at the Burg Giebichenstein College of Art, Kunsthochschule Halle. She lives and works in Halle (Saale).

An afternoon at the zoo. We are wandering along winding paths and instead of a melancholy panther behind bars we come across a sloth in a dense grove of fibrous trees, an alligator under a waterfall and an ibex on a synthetic resin slope. This species-appropriate living space simulates nature in a small isolated world, reproduced as if it were for a stage play. We find what is foreign to us presented in a natural framework. The form of presentation is aimed to be as natural as we can judge it to be but the portrayal of nature emerging in this way is very much man-made. It is a construction that is reproduced in our heads, as images which become more and more similar. Being inhabitants of this zoo the animals are given a quasi role. As in a "tableau vivant" –each one as a representative of its individual species– they take responsibility for an existing image of an animal.

Veronika Schneider reverses the point of view and reflects in her artistic work located along the "paths and compounds" upon the human self-image within a social-societal and local context. The "well-tended compounds" installation at five locations within Halle Zoo concerns itself with the imbalance in power between the observing subject and the observed object. Directly on the borderline between man and animal, at the glass panes of the compound, she shows human living space meeting our requirements, which have been reduced to basic activities. The stylised scenarios of human existence are available to the zoo visitors for their own use. Civilised ways of behaviour and the perspectives revealed by the animals' view of them become visible.

Veronika Schneider's installations and figures arise from the interfaces between reality and contextual locations, between one's own perception and that of others, and between alienation and assimilation. Assigned multi-level roles, standards and corporeal images and normally to be found at real locations, they make use of the material world of objects together with their character in reference to art and civilization – as do the "well-tended compounds" at the zoo as well.

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Auswahl 2008-11