Andreas Schmid: Colourfield Chemnitz

To mark the 100th anniversary of the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Berlin-based artist Andreas Schmid created "Colourfield Chemnitz " , a light art installation consisting of 38 LED bundles. Installed behind the windows of the main portal of the former König-Albert-Museum facing Theaterplatz, these light sources create a dynamic, colour-intensive composition using computer-controlled colour sequences.

The artist programmed 127 different scenes, which appear one after the other in a cycle lasting around ten minutes. Schmid developed a separate, fleeting pattern for each scene, sometimes bright orange, sometimes soft turquoise, in winter also in cool blue. Andreas Schmid studied knot art in Beijing, China, where he explored the traditional relationship between interior and exterior spaces. His work in Chemnitz also understands spaces as transition zones between perception and movement, between inside and outside. The light score, inspired by contemporary music, makes the architecture tangible, visible and perceptible for the viewer.

"It was clear to me that Chemnitz was about colour," says the artist, who was born in Stuttgart in 1955 and sees his work as an homage to the colour painting of Expressionism - in particular to the artists of the "Die Brücke" group founded in Dresden in 1905. Works by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, who grew up in Chemnitz, are now an integral part of the Chemnitz art collections.

(Text: Ulrike Pennewitz / Alexander Ochs)