The whole installation clearly formulated three basic situations or scenes of human behaviour, which, due to their repetition, can lay claim to being universally valid. Dynamic departure, the will to persist, and enactment were presented like a model of a trinity on a table, which both alludes to the proverbial negotiating table and assumes the function of a pedestal for the exhibited works. The installation was a pointed presentation of a three-dimensional, ‘constructed picture’ of an undecided situation.
Schütte, other artists, gallerists, and curators have always liked to use the tension which presents itself in such a situation as a metaphor to heighten an understanding of the situation and the possibilities of art in the wake of modernism. In this context and due to its wide-ranging potential, the model as a concept, an attitude, and a phenomenon became a much needed guiding term.
Any concentration on the chronology reveals that Schütte’s career developed within a network of people, such as Kasper König and Konrad Fischer, and of institutions, which accompanied his development as supportive catalysts, as friends to turn to or as trading partners. In parallel to this, Schütte continued to work on the broadening and consolidation of his repertoire, regardless of trends such as the painting style of the so-called ‘Junge Wilde’ or of the fact that in the early 1980s he was temporarily relegated to the so-called ‘model builders.’Schütte created a range of works: series of paintings and drawings, designs for sculptures, works to be placed outside, stage sets, models, and installations. On the occasion of his first one-man-show at Haus Lange in Krefeld in 1986, all of the works created up to that time could be experienced in the round and now Schütte’s talent for art and for exhibition-making became clear. Against the background of an increasingly academic debate, the catalogue essay by Julian Heynen, written in the style of a collage, proves to be a congenial addition to the literature and helps to deepen and broaden the focus.
In 1988 Bettina Hesse wrote of Schütte’s talent for scenography in a short story entitled ‘Der Zeremonienmeister’ (The Master of Ceremonies/The Scenewright), which was published in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition at Kunsthalle Baden-Baden. Around this time, Schütte had begun to concpetualise and realise exhibitions as touring shows with allusive titles such as Sieben Felder (Seven Fields, 1990), to give interviews coining distinct metaphors and to write and publish stories that with a sense of dark humour deal with the auto-destructive and nightmarish aspects of the common practices and developments within the so-called art world. Within this field of activity we discern the common belief that one can identify what is missing and find a way forward on this basis.The fact that Schütte can think through his models, and uses previously suppressed means, such as figuration and colour washes, allows him to operate from an advantageous position.