An exhibition about empty spaces, drill holes, and explorations of materials and boundaries.

In his art, Martin Bruno Schmid explores the nature of given materials and structures and the creative possibilities they offer. His approach is usually subtractive in nature: he pierces, grinds away or perforates, thereby creating new aesthetic perspectives on the seemingly familiar.
The use of materials is often minimal, yet the results are astonishing. For his series ‘Pencil Tip in Paper’, all that is needed is a sheet of paper and a pencil. Using the tip of the pencil, Schmid pierces the surface, creating thousands of dots, holes and relief-like indentations. The smooth sheet of paper thus takes on a three-dimensional quality and is no longer merely the medium for a composition, but becomes a work of art in its own right.
For ‘Facepeelings’, the Stuttgart-based artist uses high-gloss magazines, polishing their surfaces until the models, cover stories and products depicted on them are no longer visible and the paper is once again almost white.
Here, as in numerous other works, Schmid makes the empty space the subject of his work. This is also central to an ongoing series of wall installations in which the artist cuts out sections from partition walls directly at the locations of well-known artworks, precisely matching their dimensions. The cut-out refers, on the one hand, to the work that can no longer be seen; yet, through the empty space, it also makes the museum wall – and thus the institutional conditions of museum operations – visible, as it were.