Sandro Ricaldone

TOMAS SCHMIT
Making Things
Drawing Action Language 1970–2006
Edited by Jenny Graser and Barbara Wien. Text by Jenny Graser, Dagmar Korbacher, Kasper König, Tomas Schmit, Dorothy Iannone, et al.
Hatje Cantz, 2021

When the European Fluxus group split in 1964 after two eventful years, Tomas Schmit, who had been involved in the group’s actions as a performer, gradually withdrew from performing. From 1966 he devoted himself primarily to writing and drawing. But the idea of the stage as a place where an action is performed in front of and with an audience did not vanish from his art. From then on, Schmit staged “the performance of drawing” on paper. In this catalogue, the close interlocking of performance and drawing in Schmit’s entire oeuvre is examined for the first time. The publication further reflects on the manifold spectrum of his drawing and language art spanning almost 40 years.

TOMAS SCHMIT (1943–2006) came to art as an autodidact, learning from Fluxus artists such as Nam June Paik, George Maciunas, Arthur Köpcke, and Ludwig Gosewitz, with whom he began performing in 1962. His drawings provide complex, often humorous commentary and engage with subjects as diverse as language, logic, cybernetics, biology, behavioral science, and perception.