Dubbed “The King of The Uncanny,” Gregor Schneider is, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest artists alive. His installations subvert our sense of the familiar, leading to a psychic space where he runs around like Leatherface all over our trust.

At the age of 16, he began by renovating his parents house over and over again; a labyrinth of stairways to no-where, 70′s horror film-esque basements, and rooms that mirror each other down to the finest detail (a displaced hair on a bar of soap.) By disturbing the domestic, he subtly screws the sense of ourselves. To add to the unease, he never stops the renovations – each time you go back something has changed grandly or just enough to cause an unsettling pause.

Things got so weird, that at age 16, his parents moved out and left him in the family home (located in Rheydt, Germany) to refine his craft. Today Schneider has taken his Hitchcock meets Hooper aesthetic to large scale projects.  Through duplicating adjacent flats in London, constructing enormous black cubes to replace mosques, and a large scale reproduction of the inmate yard at Guantanamo as a spa – he’s taken the personal security expected in ones home or society, messing with how we perceive ourselves in relation to these “institutions” of home, belief, and function.

Gregor Schneider paces the isles of Home Depot thinking up ways of keeping us all on edge by using materials as simple as plaster, nails, and duct tape; all of which evoke the sensations tied to the ritualistic horror found in Al Qaeda beheading videos.

- El Chacal -(Swellco & Swellco 33259c)
Los Angeles