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 lastic shelves covered in Nutella, a child’s shopping trolley filled with tubs of Penaten baby cream and a pile of dirty sugar on the floor in a gallery corner are just some of the works by the German conceptual sculptor and installation artist, Thomas Rentmeister. Needless to say, Rentmeister’s works are both intriguing and perplexing in the tradition of avant-garde artists before him. His works have been enthusiastically received by the art world and have been exhibited in solo shows at institutions including the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; the Centraal Museum, Utrecht; and the Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne. Rentmeister’s works have also been collected by numerous museums, including the Kunstwegen, Nordhorn; the MARTa, Herford; the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; the Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach; and the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam.
Born in 1964 in Westphalia, Rentmeister completed an art foundation year in Münster before going on to complete a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts under Günther Uecker and Alfonso Hüppi at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Highly valuing autonomy and the freedom it accords, Rentmeister was drawn to the idea of pursuing a career in the arts from a young age.
Rentmeister has received various awards in recognition of his work, including the Philip Morris scholarship, the Kunstfonds e.V. Bonn stipend, the Kunststiftung Erich Hauser studio scholarship, and the Piepenbrock Junior Award for Sculpture. Currently based in Berlin, Rentmeister is preparing for upcoming exhibitions and is lecturing at the Braunschweig University of Art, Braunschweig where he is a professor. Rentmeister is represented internationally by Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam; Galerie Six Friedrich Lisa Ungar, München; Galerie Aurel Scheibler, Berlin; and the Otto Schweins Gallery, Köln.
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Thomas Rentmeister
Wäschestapel
2006
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Art Interview: You were born in 1964 in Westphalia, Germany. What was it like growing up at that time in this area?
Thomas Rentmeister: I was born in a small village called Klein Reken in the middle of the countryside in Westphalia. I lived in a little redbrick house with a pointed roof. There were many farms nearby and although it was the 1960s the environment there was more akin to the 1950s. Our home was always very hygienic. My grandmother used to say that it was so clean we could eat off of floor. The area was relatively catholic and very conservative but at the same time open to creativity. When I began making art, I was seen as the crazy artist, but in a way it was accepted. The Westphalians are very hard to work out; they are dry but at the same time they are open and warm.
Art Interview: So your environment was stable, conservative and yet supportive?
Thomas Rentmeister: Yes. When I was eight my father died and from then on I was brought up by three generations of women: my grandmother, my mother and my sister.
Art Interview: What did your mother do for a living?
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Thomas Rentmeister
Untitled
2004
Refrigerators, foam filler, Penaten baby cream
497 x 490 x 386 cm
Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Nürnberg |
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Thomas Rentmeister: Before she met my father, she trained and worked as a tailor. But after having children she stopped working and became a housewife. She never remarried and to this day she receives a pension as a widow and lives from this.
Art Interview: Were your grandparents living in the same house?
Thomas Rentmeister: Yes my grandmother lived together with us, but my grandfather had died after the war.
Art Interview: Did your family have any connection to the arts?
Thomas Rentmeister: No, none whatsoever. My father liked modern art and he had some prints in his office including, a Friedensreich Hundertwasser. I remember that he used to say to make modern art you; “Take a bucket of mud throw it against the wall. Then the work is finished.” That was how I imagined art making to be. Sometimes the escapades of the Fluxus group or Joseph Beuys were shown on the news and I think that perhaps my father had seen something about them, but in any case that was the only connection I had to modern art. My father’s ideal career for me was to work as an industry salesman but he died of a heart attack when I was eight so I essentially grew up without a father. My grandmother, mother and sister were not especially strict and they gave me somewhat of a long leash. I could do or make whatever I wanted to. My uncle had a garage where I could make things, which was sheer happiness for me.
Art Interview: What led you to the decision to study art?
Thomas Rentmeister: I always imagined artists in their studio environments. My clichéd vision of the life of an artist was that they sat the entire day in their studios and painted, or tinkered about. That appealed to me, and still appeals to me. Actually that is exactly what I do; I mess around in my studio making things, but actually I sit in front of the computer more than I tinker about.
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Thomas Rentmeister
Untitled
2005
white underwear, granulated sugar, sugar cubes, powdered sugar, flour, cotton wool, polishing threads, pieces of broken styrofoam, styrofoam granules, washing powder, Dualite, tissues, toilet paper, Megaperls, Penaten baby creme, toothpaste
115 x 520 x 490 cm
Permanent loan, Kunstmuseum Bonn |
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I thought about studying architecture or music, but I started playing an instrument too late. Art felt natural to me. I could draw and paint well and I liked doing it, so I thought why not and began studying art.
Art Interview: Did your mother support you with your choice to study art?
Thomas Rentmeister: Yes, my mother agreed with my decision but she was sceptical about it and worried. When I began to earn money from my artwork she worried a lot less.
Art Interview: You studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf…
Thomas Rentmeister: Yes. At the time it was difficult to get a place in an art academy. I was rejected in Berlin and only ten percent of applicants were accepted in Düsseldorf. I didn’t have enough confidence in myself to apply directly to Düsseldorf so I applied to Münster in the hope of transferring at a later date. So, I began by studying in Münster where I completed a foundation year before I had to do a year of Social Services in Cologne. After that I applied to Düsseldorf and asked Günther Uecker if I could join his class. I studied with him for a couple of years but for the last two or three years I changed to Alfonso Hüppi’s class where I undertook my master’s degree.
Art Interview: Did you have to work to support yourself while you were studying?
Thomas Rentmeister: I received a loan but I also worked one or two days a week doing various jobs. I transported pianos and I worked as a delivery driver for a pharmacy for a long time. For a while I put up signs for a moving company. Later I had a job making toy models out of clay until the mid 1990s. The models were of comic characters like Donkey Kong. That was a good job; it was well paid.
Art Interview: Did your part-time jobs take time away from your art?
Thomas Rentmeister: No, I have never had to work so much that I couldn’t practice my art. I only worked part-time side jobs to cover the basic minimum. I actually was always lucky about selling my artwork. Sometimes money was scarce but every time I reached a point where I couldn’t afford to live, the next sale of my art came along. I sold my first artwork in 1994 and since then I have done pretty well for myself. The first studio I had was in 1987 in Cologne. I started my studies in Düsseldorf with Uecker in the summer semester of 1987. So, one day a week I travelled to Düsseldorf from Cologne to discuss with my professors what I was doing in my atelier. I always invested whatever money I had into my atelier and materials. I thought like a businessman from the beginning and I was relatively prepared to take risks. I would never invest so much money into a project that it would be too much of a risk but if I felt that a project was right I would invest in it. I’ve continued that practice ever since.
Art Interview: How was Gunter Uecker as a teacher?
Thomas Rentmeister: Uecker was a superstar in the art world during the sixties and seventies. He is very nice person and he would do things like invite his students out to dinner. But as a teacher he tended to talk in long monologues and he wasn't really intertested in helping me with my creative process. I got the impression that he was so involved with his own work that his student’s ideas were a distraction to him. Eventually I felt that he wasn’t the right teacher for me. I think it was Andreas Siekmann who persuaded me to go to the Hüppi class.
Art Interview: And how was Alfonso Hüppi’s class?
Thomas Rentmeister: Hüppi is a very, very good teacher. The discussions in the class was far more lively than in Uecker’s classes which tended to be rather esoteric. In the Hüppi class the viewpoints were a lot more interesting. People like Torsten Slama and Monika Baer were there.
Art Interview: Are you still in contact with either Uecker or Hüppi?
Thomas Rentmeister: Yes, Hüppi calls me sometimes. I am going to meet him in a cafe on Sunday morning. When he is in Berlin he usually holds a breakfast where he calls his alumnae together. I haven’t seen Uecker in a long time though; I don’t have contact with him anymore.
Art Interview: Were Uecker or Hüppi able to assist you in any way, for example, in gaining exhibitions or acquiring stipends?
Thomas Rentmeister: I think I received the Phillip Morris Scholarship in 1988 because I had studied with Uecker. The stipend was 10,000 DM, which was a tremendous amount of money at the time. It meant that I could live in Berlin and have access to the Bildhauerwerkstatt Berlin for half a year. I was nominated anonymously, I believe, because I was working with Uecker. I still don’t know who I have to thank to for that. Otherwise, there were only class exhibitions. I wasn’t interested in exhibiting with the people in Uecker’s circle. Perhaps I could have slimed my way in if I had wanted to, but that wasn’t something I was interested in. I always found my own way and by 1993 Otto Schweins Gallery began representing my work.
Art Interview: You had your first solo exhibition in 1989 at Galerie Vincenz Sala while you were still a student.
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Thomas Rentmeister
Earthapfelroom
2007
Potato chips
70 x 500 x 250 cm
Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main |
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Thomas Rentmeister: Galerie Vincenz Sala was on Potsdamer Strasse, not far from the Tagesspiegel building. It was in a former stationary store named Vincenz Sala. When the gallery opened they took the name from the sign painted on the building outside. Helmut Bauer, who is now a district attorney, and Hermann Öchterring, who is now a goldsmith, set a gallery up there as a hobby. It was on the second floor in an un-renovated flat. It was clean but part of the ceiling was made of aluminium foil and had straw coming out it. The walls were brownish but somehow it had an incredibly lovely atmosphere.
Art Interview: How did you get to know them?
Thomas Rentmeister: Through the Phillip Morris Scholarship and the artist Ulla Hahn who knew the two of them. I was introduced to Helmut and Hermann in Kumpelnest 3000, which was already there at that time. I lived two doors down on Lützowstraße, and I was there every evening getting wasted for the duration of my stipend. (Laughs).
Art Interview: Why did you decide to become a professional artist, what were your personal motivations?
Thomas Rentmeister: Independence, the desire to have no boss and to be able to do what I want. The autonomy; I felt from the beginning that the most important thing was that I would be autonomous.
Art Interview: Three years after you graduated you received a grant from the Kunstfonds e.V. Bonn. What where they able to provide for you?
Thomas Rentmeister: Money, simply money. I received $1400 per month, which was 2000 DM. I received a year contract with one month’s pay as a bonus at the end. It was fantastic but it was enough to spoil me a little. After that year I had to readjust to money not flowing in as easily.
Art Interview: What were you able to accomplish during that time?
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Thomas Rentmeister
Welcome Exhibition
Installation View |
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Thomas Rentmeister: I made my polyester works in 1996. I had always put a lot of money into my art, and so things didn’t change much except that I could be a little more relaxed. I had already sold a few works by that time, so it simply made things more comfortable by having an extra income.
Art Interview: Did you have any other galleries in addition to Otto Schweins Gallery representing you by that time?
Thomas Rentmeister: I was always a little reserved when it came to gallery representation. I had in fact received many offers but during the 1990s I only worked with Otto Schweins. I believe his original space was only 12 square meters but that was OK for me. I had my first exhibitions there in 1991 and in 1993. By 1995 Otto Schweins had moved to a larger space in the center of Cologne, which was formerly a lawyers' office. I had my best exhibition there entitled Welcome. He left the offices as they were and I took the polyester pieces, the coffee-cups and the big brown cube there. The walls of the rooms were wallpapered and they were painted either pastel purple, yellow or olive green. There were neon lights with translucent shades suspended from the ceiling and the floors were covered with brown and biege carpeting. The air seemed so thick in those rooms that you felt as though you were stuck in jelly. It was really an ‘anti-white cube’ exhibition. The gallery made a wonderful catalogue of that exhibition.
Art Interview: Do you receive direct results from your solo exhibitions, in terms of sales or exhibition space?
Thomas Rentmeister: The effects are always indirect and are therefore not very noticeable. I have never directly sold a work during an art fair or an exhibition. Spontaneous sales from exhibitions are rare. Sales are always protracted. The people come back after they have seen the exhibitions. That was even the case with the Kölnischer Kunstverein in 2001. At my first institutional exhibition it was quite noticeable that people were approaching me who had wanted nothing to do with me previously.
Art Interview: In 1999 you also received a residency from the Kunststiftung Erich Hauser.
Thomas Rentmeister: Yes that was a fourteen-day residency. Udo Kittelmann recommended me, he was still at the beginning of his career then and he had been directing the Forum Kunst Rottweil. Because of that he had contacts at the Kunststiftung and was entitled to make suggestions. I was allowed to use Erich Hauser’s Studio for the fourteen days and his staff.
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Thomas Rentmeister
Untitled
1999
Lacquered Steel
105 x 231 x 120 cm
Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven, Wilhelmshaven |
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Art Interview: Which work did you produce there?
Thomas Rentmeister: I made a very nice piece out of metal there. An earlier work of mine was very similar but it was constructed out of cardboard. It had a mixture between a military look - an anti-tank missile, a bomb, or a military vehicle - and the look of a violin case. It was lacquered in dark brown. It was technically laborious to create because the polygons had to be welded together with rounded-off edges. The edges had to be bent, or sections of cut tubes had to be welded on. I did all the welding myself. I worked twelve to fourteen hours a day, for fourteen days. The piece had to be finished for the exhibition afterwards. I lost five kilograms during that time.
Art Interview: Did you realize when your career as an artist began?
Thomas Rentmeister: I think my career really began when my work started to be included in exhibitions without any effort from me. Perhaps that had already begun when Dr. Hannelore Kersting organized a solo exhibition for me in 1995 at the Städtisches Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach. Certainly by 2001 with the exhibition in at the Kölnischer Kunstverein things were running well. After the Kunstverein exhibition in Cologne I received the Piepenbrock Prize and had an exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum in Berlin. It is moments like those that people start to notice you.
Art Interview: What do you believe attracted the interest of people more: the institutions that you have exhibited in or the artists that you have shown alongside of?
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Thomas Rentmeister
Untitled
2001
Truck Tarpaulin on wood frame
225 x 330 x 7 cm
Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin |
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Thomas Rentmeister: I would say the institutions that I have exhibited in. Sometimes I’ve shown with other artists; such as Helmut Brosch in Kunstverein Heilbronn. In 1997 I had a show in France with Thomas Demand in a Museum called Centre d'Art Contemporain de Vassivière en Limousin. I think the more museum exhibitions you have, the more people know the work and want collaborate with you. I also had a large exhibition that was a sort of retrospective in the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam. An international event like that was definitely beneficial to me in terms of publicity.
Art Interview: How did you start exhibiting internationally?
Thomas Rentmeister: The dual-exhibition with Thomas Demand in 1997 was the first international exhibition that I had had. Thomas invited me to exhibit with him, because he thought a double exhibition in that space would work better. In 1999 the gallery Ellen de Bruijne Projects began representing me in Amsterdam, Netherlands, which was in addition to Otto Schweins. At some point I came into contact with Sjarel Ex the Director of the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, Netherlands. I was asked if I wanted to do an exhibition there. The exhibition was planned to be small scaled, but due to a renovation at the museum more space became available. They gave me an entire level of the building, which was enormous. It spanned fifteen hundred meters and was divided into 18 rooms. I exhibited around fifty works as a sort of retrospective but I included new works as well. Until five years ago I have almost exclusively worked in Germany, but I have expanded now to Switzerland, the Netherlands and Belgium and I have done a few things in Poland, England, Australia, Israel, and in Ushuaia, Argentine at the Biennial of the End of the World. Occasionally there will be a request from South America or Sweden. I hope to show at more international art fairs in the next few years. I have also done some work in Spain rather selectively. In 2011 I will be having a large exhibition in the Kunstmuseum Bonn and in 2012 Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts will also take over this show.
Art Interview: What art fairs have you shown at?
Thomas Rentmeister: The art fairs that I have mainly shown in were in Basel, Berlin, Cologne, and at Frieze in Regent's Park, London.
Art Interview: How do you manage to transport your work?
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Thomas Rentmeister
Untitled
2007
Sugar, shopping cart
102 x 545 x 485 cm
Haus am Waldsee, Berlin |
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Thomas Rentmeister
Untitled
2001
Nutella chocolate-hazelnut spread
35 x 1600 x 600 cm
Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne |
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Thomas Rentmeister: When I make an artwork, I allocate a certain amount of money to having transport crates made for it. I keep the art in storage because I don’t want my works to be standing around when I am working on new things. Exhibitions normally consist of new works or in situ installations where the material is acquired for the site. Often those things are just thrown away after the exhibition.
Art Interview: Can any of your temporary installations be reinstalled?
Thomas Rentmeister: Yes. For example, the dune of sugar that I will show in the Eating the Universe exhibition at the Kusnthalle Düsseldorf is in principle a work that can always be reconstructed. The Nutella works are one of a kind but they could be recreated. We have recently bought more Nutella for something coming up. The works that I exhibited in the Kölnischer Kunstverein are one of a kind pieces that are not to be repeated.
Art Interview: Did you use the brand Nutella exclusively?
Thomas Rentmeister: I used a cheaper version of the original Nutella because I needed four metric tons of it.
Art Interview: How do you acquire four metric tons of Nutella?
Thomas Rentmeister: The company that ordered it was a sub-company of the art collector Dr. Arend Oetker who is the cousin of Dr. August Oetker who runs the company Dr. Oetker. Schwartau, the jam-making company had a daughter-firm called Winsenia who made this wonderful chocolate nut-nougat spread called Nussenia, but unfortunately it doesn’t exist anymore.
Art Interview: Did they deliver it directly to the exhibition space?
Thomas Rentmeister: Yes, a semi-trailer truck delivered it. This was a work that we made in situ and it was thrown away afterwards. It would have been extremely difficult to remove from the space and keep intact. It was intended to be a temporary thing.
Art Interview: When was your first museum exhibition?
Thomas Rentmeister: In 1995 at the Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach. It was a small solo exhibition where I showed four polyester sculptures.
Art Interview: How did you receive the invitation to show there?
This oral history transcript is the result of a digitally recorded interview with Thomas Rentmeister on November 6, 2009. The interview took place at Thomas Rentmeister's studio in Berlin, Germany and was conducted by Brendan Davis for Art Interview Online Magazine. This interview was translated from German to English by Anna Canby Monk. Andrea Pahor wrote the introductory text. |
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