Thomas

Schneider

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Thomas Schneider

Thomas Schneider works with fragments of large-scale posters. Especially individual letters and typographic elements, removing them from their original context and reassembling them into new visual compositions. Through this process, language becomes form, rhythm, and texture. The original messages of advertising are dissolved, allowing new meanings to emerge between abstraction, memory, and perception.

In the Words of the Artist

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My work is based on advertising posters that I find in public spaces. Collecting them fulfils a primal instinct in me. I cut up the letters on the posters and arranged them in a new form using paste on canvas. For me, collage means destruction and re-creation. I destroy ‘legible messages’ and intuitively transform them into new worlds of images and symbols. Every new collage is always an adventure whose outcome I do not know. The appealing thing about it is that the material is limited, in contrast to graphic work on the computer. I also really like the paste on my fingers and working with my hands.

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I do choose colors deliberately. I like it best when it’s not a “solid” block of color, but rather an area with gradients, like in a photograph. When I cut up the text on such a surface and reposition it, it gives my collages an extra dimension of “depth.” But it’s not just the color I choose based on—it’s also the font. Sans-serif fonts are very common. And I’m always very happy when I have a poster at my disposal that doesn’t use a standard sans-serif font, but rather a serif font.

I’m always so happy when my mom calls to tell me she’s got some posters for me again! In the winter, when it rains a lot, they often fall off the billboards in the parking lot in front of the supermarket. Ever since I picked up some fallen posters there once and my mom saw me do it, she’s been collecting them too. My mom always finds it funny when other people in the supermarket parking lot look a little confused when they see her packing the fallen wet posters into her little car. She dries them in the basement, and when I visit my mom, I always have to separate the posters first, since there are always 5 or 6 layers of posters stuck on top of each other.

I dampen the posters on a lawn in front of my mother’s house (the neighbors have already gotten used to the sight of many advertising posters spread out on my mother’s lawn...) and separate the individual layers from one another. I never know what awaits me underneath. For me, it’s like unwrapping presents at Christmas. My approach to my artistic work doesn’t change whether the posters are from my mother or not.

I’m glad I get to experience this with my mother! It’s a privilege for which I’m very grateful. Seriously, I’m thinking about doing a “Mother Collage Series” in the future.

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Maybe the city influences me a little, because there are so many events here that are advertised on posters. Unlike in the countryside, there are also more advertising spaces here. Of course, it’s especially noticeable when there are elections—whether in the city, the state, or across Germany. That’s when extra billboards are put up all over town. And election posters always have large letters. I’m always happy when elections take place during a season when it rains a lot, because then it’s easier for me to take them down.

I used to make decollages. In a special form, because I only used one poster. At some point, I constructed a new form from the letters of a poster and realised that this was exactly my kind of collage. The result was not a destructive image composition, but a completely new ‘positive’ form. I always look at my material for a long time before making the first cut. An inner dialogue arises. The material or the letters speak to me. At some point, I am ready to make the first cut, and the search for the new composition begins.

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About the Artist

Thomas Schneider (born 1965) studied painting and graphic design in Trier and Düsseldorf. From 1995 to 2005, he worked as an internationally acclaimed art director in advertising agencies. His work is based on advertising posters he finds in public spaces. He destroys these found objects and their unambiguous advertising messages, collaging them to create surprisingly precise and ambiguous visual and symbolic worlds.

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