Gregor Schneider

Art historian Raimund Stecker looks back at the ever-changing work of German artist Gregor Schneider, who has been transforming his own domestic world since his youth.
Since 1985, Gregor Schneider has occupied an abandoned house next to one of the largest chasms in the world—the lignite-rich surface mine near Rheydt-Mönchengladbach known as the Garzweiler—which is also next to where his parents ran their business. In the building, which he named Haus u r, he proceeded to build rooms within rooms. These eerie spaces are constructed from materials salvaged from the houses that were to be crushed by juggernaut-sized bucket-wheel excavators to expand the mine.