Thomas Schütte: Big Buildings

Since the early 1980's, Thomas Schütte&;a three-times participant in the documenta in Kassel, winner of the 2010 Düsseldorf Art Prize, and best individual artist at the 2005 Venice Biennale&;has worked on architectural models, scenes, and figurative scenarios. Replete with notes on relative dimensions or accompanied by small figures, they correspond to the realization on a larger scale, with many originally small models having been converted into large-scale works over time. The interplay between the small and the large, between the model and its realization, and between the notions of art as a model and the models as art are recurring themes throughout Thomas Schütte&;s oeuvre. He both instigated the publication of this voluminous book about the show in Bonn and laid down its specific detail, so there is scarcely a single group of works missing from this chronological survey of the past thirty years. The model itself is not just the nucleus of both a fantastical oeuvre, but takes on a more seismographic function and rediscovers the architectural arts on behalf of fine art.