THOMAS SCHÜTTE - PHAIDON

German artist Thomas Schütte (b.1954) is concerned with models for living, rules for making art and, in turn, the failed flights of these systems and aspirations. Schütte's art looks utilitarian - offering shelter, sustenance and companionship - but delivers false promises and alien worlds such as his museum that incinerates art, potatoes made of bronze and the artist's vision of humanity as tiny wooden audiences, two-headed hybrids or giant robotic figures. Schütte's sculptures vary in scale from giant candy-coloured fruits to miniature fairy-tale buildings. The artist manipulates size, materials and subject matter with astounding versatility and dexterity, perpetually shifting scales so that the viewer is immersed in a series of poetic yet dysfunctional utopias. He has also constructed a series of architectural models of institutions and monuments whose eclectic array of building typologies suggest de Chirico-like metaphysical spaces.