Thomas Schütte: Low Tide Wandering

This installation, conceived specially for the gallery, will be the first substantial presentation of the artist’s work in the UK since his exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1998.

Having emerged from the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie in the late 1970s, Thomas Schütte has become established as one of the most important German artists working today. His approach falls outside the scope of mainstream contemporary practice, employing a wide range of disciplines, from figurative sculpture and architectural models to drawing, watercolour painting and printmaking. His work combines the actuality of history and lived experience with the fantastical and the utopian.

Much of Schütte’s art is permeated with narrative elements that are conveyed by representational and easily comprehensible motifs. He is just as interested in the way that art comes into being as he is in collecting, preserving and presenting. Low Tide Wandering takes the form of an expanded visual diary, a record of certain people, places and states of mind. The prints are presented hanging unframed from a network of wires which traverse the gallery spaces. Recalling earlier works such as The Laundry (1998) and Requiem (1992), this form of presentation draws attention to the fragile physicality of the prints and the very immediate nature of Schütte’s drawing.