Nicolaus Schmidt

• Illustration — Nicolaus Schmidt WELTEN, poster Richard Haizmann Museum - Museum of Modern Art Niebüll Since the end of the 1980s, Schmidt has been working on his “Morphograms,” anthropomorphic designs derived from the lines of the human body. The works start as drawings and are transformed into paintings and sculptures. Another long-term project is the Kosmographie Gayhane, which Schmidt started in 2004. Gayhane is a successful Berlin nightlife event at the legendary SO36, offering Turkish gays and lesbians a place to meet. Schmidt’s Kosmographie is both documentary and fiction. It is a collection of fifty photographic portraits as well as illegible words written in an oriental-looking script. Since 2007, the artist has been working on the New York Breakdancers Project (N.Y.P.B.). In a first show 2009 at Deutsches Haus/NYU he presents a series of large sized photographs tackling the subject of breakdance in urban space. "Nicolaus Schmidt’s photos are based on the idea of giving the dancers all the freedom to perform while the artist acts as a quasi-neutral observer". (Aboli Lion) In 2011 Nicolaus Schmidt portrayed New York b-boys in his book Breakin' the City. His pictures are a unique mixture of dance and architecture photography. This book marks the end of his breakdancers project. In his book Astor Place, Broadway, New York, the photographer documents a barber shop where more than 50 hair stylists immigrated from all parts of the world are on work in the basement of an East Village building. Astor Place Hairstylists is one of the last stores remaining from the 1940s in Lower Manhattan. Nicolaus Schmidt captures the unique atmosphere of this living museum. In 2015 the exhibition "Dignity and Strength - Photographs of Women in India" at the India International Centre in New Delhi was covered by several of the main Indian newspapers. Nicolaus Schmidt’s portrait-series reflect the situation of women, caught between tradition, religion and the modern age. The artist points at the contradictions in the relationship between women and men. The photographs reveal that even the poorest women are capable of displaying a surprising self-confidence. In 2022 the second exhibition of Nicolaus Schmidt at the India International Centre – INDIA TECTON | Architectural Expressions in India – was inaugurated by the German ambassador Mr. Philipp Ackermann. The book and exhibition INDIA TECTON are the result of ten years of photographic research into the forms of Indian architecture. The artist shows a complex, multi-faceted, diverse history of India through its architecture. On 13 May 2023, there was another INDIA TECTION exhibition of Nicolaus Schmidt which took place at Goethe-Institut Bangalore, in collaboration with the with Museum of Art & Photography, Bangalore.