Tomas Schmit’s Fluxus colleague Nam June Paik once said that he would much rather have been Tomas Schmit than Nam June Paik. Though Schmit was hardly one of the best-known representatives of the Fluxus movement—at least nowhere near as prominent as Paik—he was certainly one of its most radical. From his early interventions to the books, texts, editions, and drawings to which Schmit increasingly shifted, the artist’s practice—spanning from the early 1960s until his death in 2006—yielded an extensive, boundary-breaking oeuvre that merged everyday life and art, language and image, performance and writing.
Neue Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) will not only show a number of original scores of Schmit’s early interventions and have them performed, it is also developing a number of new interpretations and formats in collaboration with contemporary artists including Nina Canell, Hajnal Németh, and Alexandra Pirici. Meanwhile Kupferstichkabinett, which provided us with the works shown here, puts the spotlight on Schmit’s drawings. The exhibition, entitled ›making things‹, shows works on paper created over a period of nearly 40 years. Like other works by Schmit, the drawings are characterised not only by a particular verbal and linguistic wit and a certain, at times laconic lightness, but also by a kind of eventfulness—›making things‹, you could say.
NEUER BERLINER KUNSTVEREIN (N.B.K)
Tomas Schmit. Stücke, Aktionen, Dokumente 1962—1970
16 SEP 2021—23 JAN 2022
Opening 15 SEP, noon—10pm
KUPFERSTICHKABINETT BERLIN
sachen m a c h e n. Tomas Schmit: Zeichnung, Aktion, Sprache 1970—2006
15 SEP 2021—9 JAN 2022
Opening 15 SEP, 10am—6pm