ANDREAS SCHROEDER

Self Portrait (2015, revised version 2023)
The multi-channel video installation shows a concentrated face on each screen, looking straight into the camera and thus appearing to gaze directly at the viewer. The gaze wanders across the screen and repeatedly downwards, outside the field of vision. The sound reveals the activity of drawing. Each person was confronted with their own reflection in front of a semi-transparent mirror, behind which a camera recorded the process of self-portraiture. The length of the videos varies between 15 and 80 minutes, depending on the individual decision of the person being portrayed.
In the actual installation, the visitor sat in front of the respective face and oscillated between the role of observer and observed, thus becoming the mirror image of the respective face.

Ad Infinitum
Trigonal space with semi-transparent mirror,
opposite mirror, stool

An interactive and walk-in installation: a triangular space equipped with a door and a semi-transparent mirror facing another mirror of the same size.
The work explores the act of consciousness and perception in inter- and intrapersonal relationships and a possible confrontation with an extra-personal reflection.
Within the triangular space, the viewer can observe without being seen, while the other person in front of them is exposed to their reflection and the possible gaze of the other behind it. Self-perception is conditioned and conditioning. It occurs through the internalisation of the gaze of the other on one's own self as such.
The other mirror facing this gaze doubles the situation and opens up another perspective: the anticipation of an infinite metalepsis – an endless regression of self-referential reflections of two parallel mirrors – impossible to perceive for the incorporated self in between, but anticipatable for an ‘immaterial’ gaze behind the mirror.

Exhibition View