The Homestead Principle #4 

Sebastiaan Schlicher

drawings, installation

7 September – 5 October 2014

Sebastiaan Schlicher (1975) draws pop musicians, religious fanatics and survivalists who are all using their subculture to assume a larger-than-life personality as a means to fight the insignificance of their everyday existence. For some time Schlicher has focused on the Homestead Principle: the appropriation of resources that have not yet been claimed, usually implying a plot of land. This mechanism perfectly matches the theme of the ‘lone wolf’, an individual who wants to live his life in a heroic and authentic way and longs to turn his back on society. As Patti Smith so aptly put it: ‘Outside of society they are waiting for me, outside of society is where I want to be.’

Together with members of the group Amerikan Teenager, Sebastiaan Schlicher will build a hut and appropriate the gallery for this exhibition. Amerikan Teenager consists of musicians and artist-friends of Schlicher who will also do a noise performance during the opening. The inside of the hut will be completely covered with drawings of forestial landscapes with huts and devices to survive in nature. In the hut also the video Disappear is shown: a compilation of forest fires seemingly documented by the arsonist who wants to plunge the world into an apocalypse. In the rest of the gallery new drawings, both large and small are displayed.