Exhibition opening Friday, May 9, 2025, 7 p.m.
Exhibition runs until June 21, 2025.
In their first joint exhibition, Düsseldorf-based sculptor and draftsman Ulrike Kötz and Mannheim-based photo artist Peter Schlör enter into dialogue at the Galerie Obrist. From May 9 to June 21, 2025, the theme is the house, the apartment, and the sense of being housed, which both approach from different angles. They use a straightforward and clear formal language that condenses the essence of the house’s structure: floor, four walls, roof.
While Kötz depicts isometric architectural drawings of apartments in finely drawn gouaches and also transforms them into concrete models, Peter Schlör, in his austere black-and-white photographs, juxtaposes the house and clusters of houses with expansive landscapes.
For Ulrike Kötz, the question of space and its ideal proportions plays a major role: Her gouaches and concrete sculptures are scaled-down models of her own living and working spaces, familiar spaces that she has used for years. She attempts to recreate the layout of the rooms from memory. In doing so, she dispenses with anything individual. Personal spaces become objectified hermitages that can now, in principle, be used for any purpose. As prototypes, they could be used, similar to the Vitruvian hut, as a starting point for all possible architecture. As a sculptor, she is interested in the individual components of a house, or rather, the sculptural features such as the sweep of a staircase, the floor as a connecting element to apartment entrances, or the door that conceals nothing and stands freely in the space.
Peter Schlör also finds the archetypal form of the house in his photographs: a rugged landscape, within which a single house is depicted, formulated solely by the outline of its wall and gable, as a child might draw a house. Schlör’s work fundamentally explores archetypes, such as the tree, the river, the mountain, or the house, which, as timeless symbols, carry meaning for people of every era and every culture. The house has been a central theme for him from the very beginning, and the buildings are always reduced to their basic forms. They appear as symbols of security and protection from the outside world, but simultaneously also as places of hermeticism, loneliness, and sterility.
While Schlör’s attention is directly focused on the relationship between the built and natural environment, Ulrike Kötz works on a more abstract level, addressing the relationship between people and (constructed) space. Both are driven by the question: How does the space we know as “home” transform into an intellectual, creative, or psychological concept?
Ulrike Kötz studied at the HBK Hamburg under Prof. Bogomir Ecker until 1995 and then under Prof. Hubert Kiecol in Düsseldorf until 2000, where she graduated with an academy certificate. Ulrike Kötz lives and works in Düsseldorf.
Mannheim-based Peter Schlör (*1964) has been exploring the medium of photography for four decades. His distinctive black-and-white photographic works have been exhibited in numerous museums, art associations, and international galleries.
Ulrike Kötz / Peter Schlör: One Roof, Four Walls
May 10–June 21, 2025
Opening: Friday, May 9, 2025, 7 p.m.