Duration 9.9.26 – 24.10.26

Water lilies grow as long-lived, extensively branching rhizomes beneath the water, revealing only their
blossoms and floating leaves at the surface. The exhibition Blue Zone, presenting Erik Schmidt’s latest
body of work at Galerie Krinzinger, follows this logic of visibility and concealment within an extensive
network. Its starting point is his 2025 video work Rough Trade. In it, the artist himself takes on the role
of protagonist, returning to selected places that once served as settings for his earlier films or resemble
them. Shot on a smartphone, this journey into the past takes us onto the streets of Berlin, into Schmidt’s
maisonette apartment, and into the conference room of a high-rise office. Finally, the artist literally enters
the central image or self-portrait of the exhibition: a dinghy on a water-lily pond.
Schmidt transforms these and other snapshots from the approximately ten-minute short film into a series
of new, large-scale paintings. In the form of photographic prints on linen, the film stills serve as the
ground for his characteristically impasto application of paint. In places, the motifs are so thickly covered
with oil paint that the picture surface takes on a sculptural quality, causing the still images to appear to
move in an abstract way. The resulting sense of vitality corresponds to the scenes depicted, which bear
witness to the active negotiation of the self with its immediate and familiar surroundings. The urban
environment, the park landscape, or the furnished room merge with depictions of the protagonist and
those around him. The bodies are not confined to their physical presence; rather, they are understood
as repositories of movements, experiences, and memories. Schmidt seems to allow himself to be caught
and carried by this physical state, while at the same time attempting to escape from it, even to the point
of self-dissolution. Moving between conscious decision and free fall, between strength and vulnerability,
the Berlin-based artist engages in an ambivalent interplay conveyed in the video not least through
meditative choreographies, electronic melodies, and experimental camerawork.
Blue Zone revolves around an introspective re-examination of an earlier body of artistic work, without
lapsing into nostalgia, passing judgment on his own practice, or seeking definitive answers. Instead, the
exhibition openly interrogates what was and what is, sensitively situating artistic life within the continually
advancing passage of time. Schmidt’s fifth solo exhibition at Galerie Krinzinger is thus not merely an
inventory of his most recent works, but a virtuoso movement through space and time. The term “Blue
Zone” refers to those regions of the world where people achieve particularly high life expectancies. Erik
Schmidt immortalizes himself in a manner that reaches toward immortality, perhaps finding the meaning
of life in the ongoing process of movement, contemplation, and continual re-examination of one’s own
life and work.

Philipp Lange