To mark their 25th anniversary in context with the exhibition You Breathe Differently Under the Weight. Debt and Credit, the artist collective Jochen Schmith has published an edition of twenty-five posters of Picnic Blanket (Do Nothing). Contrary to the title, the work series hangs on the wall like large-format, abstract, landscape paintings. The works consist of shredded banknotes of various colors applied to the fabric of trouser pockets, which both still carry the association of value accumulation but have lost their original function. Instead, the works suggest the promise and the loss of leisure time: the Picnic Blankets are based on floor plans of parks that have been withdrawn from public use and privatized; the various titles in the series are taken from a survey on leisure activities.
For the poster edition of Picnic Blanket (Do Nothing), a small yellow circle has been added to the lower right corner of the artwork’s reproduction, with the inscription “Angebot Office Syndrome Massage” (Office syndrome massage offer). Prices for a 45- and a 60-minute massage are listed below. Wellness is soberly priced here and directly linked to economic logic—relaxation costs money and you have to be able to afford it. At the same time, the promise of relaxation is explicitly positioned as the antithesis of work: a remedy for “office syndrome,” for the physical and mental stress of everyday office life. Like the picnic blanket and the privatized park, the circulation of money in pockets and the shredded banknotes, so too is the compensation for the pain of work in wellness culture tied to ever-continuing value chains. As both advertising and artwork, Jochen Schmith’s edition as reproduction questions these logics in the most minimal and humorous way, twice over.
Jochen Schmith is an artist collective based in Hamburg. The artists have been working together since 2000, with their artistic practice focused on value, speculation and promise, work and representation, and the question of public and private space. Their works have been exhibited in Braunschweig (2010), Maastricht (2006, 2012), Bregenz (2012), Bonn (2012, 2017), Heidelberg (2011), Hong Kong (2006), Oslo (2014), Warsaw (2008), and Mannheim (2012). The collective was awarded the Edwin Scharff Prize in 2020 and the Lichtwark Prize in 2017, along with several scholarships. Jochen Schmith has been a guest professor at HFBK in Hamburg and HGB in Leipzig.
Jochen Schmith
Picnic Blanket (Do Nothing), 2025
C-Print
50 x 70 cm
edition of 25 + 4 AP
Euro 25,– (inkl. MwSt.)