GREGOR SCHNEIDER ‘Ego-Tunnel’ Survey Exhibition at Konschthal Esch, Luxembourg 

September 30, 2021

The artist Gregor Schneider, known as a “collector of spaces or rooms”, has used elements from his complete artistic works to create a solo show for the art gallery. Schneider transforms the completely gutted spaces provided to him made of exposed concrete into an elaborately designed course. For Schneider, the 2,400 sqm art gallery – a former partially renovated furniture store – is an unfinished “projection surface” and is therefore the perfect candidate for transformation. The installation and arrangement of the spaces form an autonomously functioning architectural ensemble, so that the architectural style of the Konschthal itself is pushed into the background by the space-in-space concept created by Schneider.

Schneider’s opening exhibition EGO TUNNEL offers a succession of 20 spaces, in which visitors explore different key works from Schneider’s complete artistic works via stairs and an elevator. Through various media, Schneider examines the possibilities and limitations of our self-perception and the perception of spaces that surround us and which we cannot escape, without becoming labyrinthine.

With presentations of his films, photographs, sculptures and other objects, the course created by Schneider’s Ego Tunnel is a collection of around 100 of his works and allows visitors to discover Schneider’s universe, including a fictional resident named N. Schmidt (with his own labelled doorbell), as a challenging overall piece. Gregor Schneider was once quoted as saying: “The piece is like walking through the layers and shaping walls of your own brain, and pursuing the mechanisms of perception and knowledge.”

Ego Tunnel requires a high level of concentration and attention from visitors. “Spaces that surround us are like a second skin and can never be completely visually perceived. Spaces require different mechanisms of perception and behaviour than an image or object,” says Schneider. In addition to the physical experience of how spaces affect us, Schneider is interested in a critical examination of our consciousness of spaces in our own Ego Tunnel. Read more. 

Exhibition from 02.10.2021 to 09.01.2022