Lothar Schmitz, artist and research physicist at UCLA, received his MS and Ph.D. in Physics at Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum, Germany. Schmitz has exhibited his work in numerous venues inclulding the AndrewShire Gallery,
Los Angeles, Sara Lee Projects in Santa Monica, and the University Art Museum, University of Califora,
Santa Barbara. Schmitz received a 2003 C.O.L.A. Individual Artist Grant and exhibited his "Biotopia" installation
at the Barnsdall Municipal Art Gallery.
When he talks about his work, Lothar Schmitz often refers to the blurred distinction between indoors and outdoors, natural and manmade, the real and the unreal. A physicist as well as artist, Schmitz uses science and technology to manufacture ecologies. Drawing on idealized clich?s in corporate landscaping and the ubiquitous references to Nature in interior design, they amalgamate diverse environments and allude to the accelerating pace of ecological change and genetic mutation. Miniature settings, concocted from artificial grass and greenery, mimic recognizable landscape elements yet become contrived artifacts out of context, distorted in scale, and dysfunctional.
By pitting agriculture against manufactured facsimiles, Schmitz’s installations point to our insistence that Nature can be tamed, constructed, and re-made to suit our cultural needs. The results, however, are potentially monstrous. Scientific predictability and rationale are used to construct mutant hybrids that ironically disrupt human interactions with Nature. (Across the street from the gallery is a large sport field of artificial grass. Perpetually green and immune from the need to be cared for, it smells of its ingredients, recycled rubber tires, and is highly flammable.)