1 + 1 = 3
Andreas Schmidt
March 20 – April 5, 2025
Opening: Thurs. March 20, 18 - 20 hr
Tues. + Wed. 11 - 15 hr / Thurs. + Fri. 11 - 18 hr / Sat. 11 - 15 hr
einBuch.haus / Florastr. 61, 13187 Berlin
In cooperation with Galerie Andreas Schmidt
Image: Andreas Schmidt, Unlimited Free Porn, 2011 © Andreas Schmidt
“There is a crucial difference between presenting an artist's work in a book form – a retrospective collection of reproductions – and an artist making a book. The first is the honorific art book. 'Book art' should be saved for books that are works of art, as well as books.”1
Andreas Schmidt has published over 80 artist’s books throughout his career, spanning from 1992 to the present. This exhibition explores the dynamic relationship between Schmidt’s books and their corresponding wall pieces. In some cases, the wall pieces preceded the books; in others, the books came first.
A fundamental distinction between art and books lies in the way they are experienced. A work of art can be absorbed in an instant, whereas an artist’s book requires time. Its tactile, sequential nature demands engagement beyond a single glance. The format itself shapes meaning—does a book communicate differently than an artwork on a wall? Does the shift between mediums transform perception? This exhibition invites visitors to consider an alternative equation: 1 + 1 = 3.
In the gallery space, Schmidt presents the series RGB and Porn, both of which examine the intersection of reading, seeing, and interpreting images in different contexts. Additional artist’s books are on view in the back space, where Gallery Andreas Schmidt has recently opened a new showroom.
- Richard Kostelanetz, "Book Art," in Artist's Books: A Critical Anthology and Sourcebook, ed. Joan Lyons (Rochester, NY: Visual Studies Workshop Press, 1985), 28
Andreas Schmidt
Andreas Schmidt (1967) is a Berlin based gallerist and artist whose work has been exhibited and published internationally. In 2005 German fine art and photography book publisher Hatje Cantz published his first hard-back monograph entitled Las Vegas to international critical acclaim. Described by J.G. Ballard as “the poet of the hotel corridor”, his second book, The City was published by Hatje Cantz in 2009.
Schmidt was a founding member of ABC, Artists’ Books Cooperative, in early 2010 but left the coop in 2014.
In 2013 he launched GESAMTBUCHKUNSTWERKSKULPTUR, a custom- made shelving unit containing 77 self published artist’s books, at art book fair Offprint Paris. His artist book The Time Machine was included in the group exhibition A History of Photography: Series and Sequences at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2015 which also featured work by August Sander, Eadweard Muybridge and Lewis Baltz among others. Schmidt’s artist book The Cost of Photobooks: A History Volume II was listed by Le Monde as one of the 10 best photo books of 2011.
Schmidt’s work is held in a number of private and public collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK, FRAC Centre, Orléans, France, Centre Des Livres Artistes, Saint-Yrieix-la-Perche, France, the Bavarian State Library, Munich, Germany and the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Minneapolis, USA.
?w=all&q=red&m=text#page=
Andreas Schmidt, 2010
180 x 180 mm, 80 pp.
Hardcover
Edition of 100
The triptych RGB references the three primary colors—red, green, and blue—used to render images on digital screens. Each book and its corresponding large-scale print is a composite of the first 38 computer screenshots of search results for the words “red,” “green,” and “blue” from the photo-sharing platform Flickr. Every print comprises 2,280 individual images and their corresponding titles.
PORN
Andreas Schmidt
180 x 180 mm, 80 pp.
Hardcover
Edition of 100
PORN is the fastest book Schmidt has ever created. By typing the word “porn” into Google Images, he received 137 million results in just 0.15 seconds. From these, he captured screenshots of the first 38 pages and enlisted a retoucher to black out the images, transforming the content into an abstract, censored field—a twenty-first-century Malevich, spread over 38 double pages.
