Veit Stratmann is represented by Galerie Chez Valentin.

Veit Stratmann’s work is a reflection about the experience of a given space. The artist creates objects in between art and design that the spectator/visitor of his exhibitions can use and experience. These objects – seats, nacelles, platforms, ramps, hand rails, etc. – take place in an interior or exterior space. They are objects of everyday life, but a little gap in their presentation modifies their normal and common apprehension, and calls the spectator to reflect about their function. When using them, spectators are called to have a contemplative experience of the space around it, and so see it differently. 

Sometimes the space itself, often an interior space, is modified for disturbing the visitor in his/her habits. The altered space becomes incomprehensible and non-functional, and the visitors have to decide if experience it or not. “Given that choice-making may be considered a key element of political action”, says Veit Stratmann. Fruition or not fruition of the artist’s artworks is a political question, and Stratmann invites the spectator to make that choice. This choice is underlined by the artistic gesture, but we are, in our life, constantly confronted to this kind of choices, and we made them often in an unconscious way.  

 

  


But what about those people that cannot make their choice freely? The project about L’Aquila shows the impossibility of its inhabitants to live in their city in a normal way. The new housing estates that have been built in the suburbs of the city are not an artistic gesture, but the result of some choices made by persons that have never lived there.

Veit Stratmann’s reflection about the memory of a space originated from a project called Une colline / A Hill that the artist developed in 2011 in collaboration with the Agence nationale pour la gestion des déchets radioactifs [The National Agency for Safety of Radioactive Waste Management]. The aim of the project was to think about a way to maintain the memory of site locations for nuclear waste disposal, as well as their information and contents.  

Even if the A Hill and L’Aquila projects could seem unusual in the work the artist, as per their medium and reflections, we can see in these projects that the issue of memory is introduced in Veit Stratmann’s thought as a new way to manifest this common political action where choice is the first basic element.  
More on L'Aquila project

The project has been previously presented at  Project room in Seattle, and Villa romana in Florence. The disaster management in L'Aquila has been analysed by Veit Stratmann and Michela di Carlo in a France Culture radio broadcast. 

Also, for further details about the genesis of the project and Veit Stratmann interest in questions of memory related to a specific space, see the A Hill project. 


Monographies and artists books
 
Veit Stratmann, Azyade, Kunstraum die Halle, Bochum, Germany, 1989 
Veit Stratmann, Espai 13, Miro Foundation, Barcelona, Spain, 1994 
Veit Stratmann, Art’O, Centre d’art d’Aubervilliers et Centre international de l’art et du paysage, Ile de Vassivière, Eymoutier du Lac, France 
Veit Stratmann, Galeria Nuova Icona, Venice, Italy, 1998 
Veit Stratmann, Galerie Roger Tator, Lyon, France, 1999 
Le Rond Point au Mammouth, PPT editions, 2001 (artists book) 
Tool, Outil, Werzeug, Galerie chez Valentin/agnès b., Paris, France, 2003 
Veit Stratmann, Le Grand Café Centre d’art, Saint Nazaire, France, 2006 
Morgane Marlet: La sculpture Urbaine de Veit Stratmann, entre réalité et utopie, MA thesis, Université François Rabelais, Tours, France 2009 
Shrines, M19 editions, 2009 (artists book) 
Veit Stratmann - Données/Data 2006-2011, coedited by the Geneva University of Art and Design and the Agnès b. endowment fund, Switzerland/France  
Veit Stratmann, Les Dévantures de la Rue Saint Gilles, Strzelecki Books, Cologne, Germany
VEIT STRATMANN