Berlin artist Erik Schmidt presents a compelling retrospective that showcases both his cinematic performances and masterful paintings at the Kindl Center for Contemporary Art in Neukölln. The exhibition, titled "The Rise and Fall of Erik Schmidt," runs until February 1st and offers visitors a comprehensive look at an artist who constantly stumbles over himself in films while creating extraordinary artwork.

Throughout art history, numerous artists have depicted themselves as Christ-like figures - as sufferers, misunderstood visionaries, world judges, or triumphant beings. Albrecht Dürer painted himself in this pose with long curly hair, while Martin Kippenberger nailed a wooden frog to a cross as his alter ego in withdrawal. Schmidt joins this tradition in his own unique way, sitting on a balustrade overlooking the plains of Olevano near Rome during sunset, wearing a white shirt and shorts while pouring a canister of olive oil over his head. Like his predecessors, the exact meaning behind this ritual remains cryptic.

The Berlin-based painter embodies many characters in his films, which serve as his second artistic medium. Sometimes he plays a dandy strolling aimlessly through the streets or a neurotic city dweller searching for parking. Other times he becomes the hunted among hunters, or the European in Japan who cuts his business suit with a sushi knife until it hangs around his body like a kimono. Regardless of which character Schmidt performs, he always remains the artist and outsider attempting to clarify his identity in absurd ways, using his surroundings as a reaction surface.

Schmidt's films possess the melancholic comedy of a self-doubter. "Maybe I'm just average after all," he says in one voice-over. In another, he reflects, "If only I had... Yes, what? I thought everything was right." If viewers only knew his cinematic personas, they might think he's wandering through life like a will-o'-the-wisp, albeit a rather brilliant one. However, this would only represent half of Erik Schmidt's artistic identity.

The painter side of Schmidt is much better known, having maintained his studio in Berlin for thirty years. The excellently curated retrospective at Kindl brings both aspects together under a title that sounds as grotesquely exaggerated as his cinematic appearances. The reference to David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, who also carried messianic traits and tragically stumbled, adds another layer of meaning to the exhibition's concept.

Visitors have the opportunity to experience both Erik Schmidts simultaneously, as projections sometimes overlay the paintings in certain sections of the exhibition. Both the painter and filmmaker work extensively with surfaces, a theme that began in his early works. Schmidt originally painted over photographic templates, with the impasto painting gradually retreating and condensing over the years until today only thick dabs of oil paint mark his painterly intervention.

The perspective shifts like an optical illusion throughout his work. Palm trees painted from below suggest paradise, yet there's the imminent danger of a coconut falling directly onto the viewer. The exploding palm fronds might already hint at destruction rather than tropical bliss. This duality runs through much of Schmidt's visual language, creating tension between beauty and threat.

During his travels and artist residencies, Schmidt consistently captures the political tensions and local sentiments of different locations. In New York, he encountered the Occupy movement as it was forming in Zuccotti Park near Wall Street. He empathetically painted the protesters with their signs and depicted police rushing toward them. Last year, during an extremely hot summer in Vienna, he portrayed young people sitting apathetically with just a few strokes, capturing the climate of exhaustion and heat.

Schmidt paints with remarkable delicacy and celebrates the medium itself. When he cultivated hunting subjects in a pointillistic manner as a counterpart to his film "Hunting Grounds" - in which he dined with aristocrats in a castle and became the hunted himself - collectors eagerly sought his paintings. The German forest and hunters on horseback proved surprisingly popular themes. With equal elegance, he later painted Tokyo's absurdly tangled power lines at intersections during a residency in Japan.

His latest film "Recap," which premieres at Kindl and was co-produced by the Zehlendorf exhibition space Fluentum, summarizes his previous explorations. While in "The Bottom Line" he approached Berlin's newly constructed office buildings as a clumsy parkour athlete, he now presses against facades like a player in a physical comedy routine - an act of helplessness. In "Hunting Grounds," he ended up wrestling with a hunter in the mud; now he rolls with another person between flower beds in Treptower Park.

Schmidt's work encompasses the most diverse forms of urban approach and rejection, representing peculiar attempts at self-determination. In the final scene of "Recap," he drops golden golf balls one after another onto the grass behind him, as if laying golden eggs or luring something to follow. "Now I'm on my way up," he had whispered in another film. "Who could stop me? Only myself, perhaps."

The exhibition provides comprehensive insight into an artist who masterfully balances self-doubt with artistic confidence, creating work that is simultaneously vulnerable and sophisticated. Through his dual practice of painting and performance, Schmidt offers a unique commentary on contemporary life, artistic identity, and the perpetual struggle between ambition and self-sabotage.