Over the course of the last thirty years Thomas Schütte has reclaimed for contemporary creative practice classic forms of artistic expression, which the avant-garde of the 1960s and 70s had high-handedly dismissed as folkloric and kitsch, and reaffirmed their social and aesthetic relevance. Working with his hands – drawing, painting in watercolours, modelling in clay or plasticine, constructing in wood and other materials – is at the heart of his creative practice.

The artist has been working with architectural models and sketches since the early 1980s, and the playful investigation of small and big, model and execution, art as a model and the model as art permeates his entire oeuvre, most palpably so in his group of architectural sculptures, which are the focus of this exhibition.

Driving Schütte’s intense engagement with the art of building and the built environment, with light and space is nothing less than the ambition to reclaim architecture for artistic creativity. Bringing together masterpieces that combine critical comment and aesthetic brilliance with poetry and humour, the exhibition makes it clear that the artist is offering a positive alternative as well as harsh criticism. In addition to the small-scale models of the last three decades, this exhibition will – for the first time – present full-scale walk-in realisations of some of his designs, among them a Holiday Home for Terrorists and a One Man House. A selection of recently completed new sculptures complements the architectural works.