Tom Schmelzer: Beautiful Outside My Head Forever / White Trash Contemporary, Hamburg

Tom Schmelzer’s solo exhibition “Beautiful Outside My Head Forever” at White Trash Contemporary in Hamburg presents a lot of animals, but watch out, it’s not a children’s zoo! Instead the visitor is confronted with worms that are thick as a finger, producing knocking sounds while winding their way on a lacquered wooden box. There’s a wearable hat made of 140 scarab beetles and a life-size baboon in a bishop’s robe. The show also features a machine that is gradually grinding a considerable number of precious pearls to dust, and dentures that are talking to each other.

In this interview with Ute Thon (Art – Das Kunstmagazin), Tom Schmelzer talks about his conceptual work in general and especially about the baboon, the scarab hat and the grinder.

Tom Schmelzer: Beautiful Outside My Head Forever at White Trash Contemporary, Hamburg. Ute Thon in conversation with Tom Schmelzer, November 3, 2010.

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Tom Schmelzer was born in Munich in 1966. He has studied the fine arts, medicine and philosophy in Munich, Oxford, Toronto and St. Louis, and did his doctorate in the field of neurology. He has exhibited at the German Historical Museum in Berlin, the Hauser der Kunst in Munich, and the Kunstverein Wasserburg. Previous to his solo exhibition at White Trash Contemporary, he participated in groups shows in the gallery in 2007 and 2009.

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