“In this work, a man’s arms and waist appear on screen, and we watch him
attempt to keep two glass bottles balanced on top one another. He
momentarily succeeds, but then the bottles quickly fall. The figure puts the
bottles back into place. They fall again. The transparency of the bottles (we can see through them) contrasts with the inscrutability of the action, and its repeated failure.” -Terri Waissman, taken from ArtNexus News, Issue #81 Jun – Aug 2011

This Sisyphean action and objects used in the video suggest the idea that we
can’t always know the meaning of an image, an act, or in total, a true identity of an object or a person, even though we might simplistically think we understand the transparency of the materials, and how they are “supposed” to function according to certain rules, e.g. gravity. The video might also be seen as a metaphor for the impact of colonialism and its interdependent nature, or perhaps the struggle with one’s existential self.
 

Schmid completed his MA in Fine Art at the Utrecht School of the Arts, Utrecht, The Netherlands, and BFA degree in Photography at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, Georgia, USA. Schmid was the recipient of the Commonwealth Connections Residency for 2010 and participated in the International section of the 2010 Liverpool Biennial.