Andreas Slominski doubts the names of things. The starting point of his works is an encyclopeadic collection which threatens to get out of hand. First of all there is the concept of the inventory in Andreas Slominikis work. One of his earliest projects – a small artist’s book published in 1987 – functions as a register of traps. There are no illustrations, just an index of different kinds of traps broken down into idiosyncratic categories with their own internal logic.

In the process, the first thing which is surpising is that despite the obvious transparence in all work-inherent order (lists, family designations, cataloguing) no linear, all-embracing geneology can be determined. Pictures and words always simultaneously refer to other words and pictures because the artist as a re-organiser of realities is, in the  face of the surrounding information explosion, mainly employed with the selection of areas or determining their boundaries. At the beginning of perception there is always a trap whether set metaphorically or really (to trap). The borders between traps in a wider sense (and all Andreas Slominski’s works are perception traps) and traps in a narrower sense (animal traps) are in a state of permanent flux.

Hans Ulrich Obrist, 2005 (translation: Tim Sharp)