Using visual and thematic research as a starting point, Eric Schumacher’s sculptural installations reflect his interest in public space and human activity within it. Rather than commenting directly on these mostly urban environments, Schumacher uses them as “visual or emotional input” for his sculpture-based practice, which often utilizes cheap and easily accessible materials such as cardboard, polystyrene, paper and MDF, as well as found or discarded items. Working intuitively and with characteristic humor and wit, he assembles and reassembles these individual items within the exhibition space with the aim of creating dynamic relationships between them.
In the exhibition come high go low, for example, Schumacher uses oversized enlargements of materials used by engineers and sculpture formations inspired by his earlier research, paintings, and his current Berlin environment. Cans and bottles, neglected and abandoned, as they are often draped in public space, remind us of human’s basic needs. But the selfless, loving, almost altruistic placement of material, the need to leave traces, also finds its place in the exhibition. Installed together on a grid, the works charmingly point to the man-made and equally random arrangement of the “unplaces” that accompany our daily public life.
Eric Schumacher *1985 in Luxembourg, is an artist living between Edinburgh and Luxembourg. He has a BA from Edinburgh College of Art and an MA in Interdisciplinary Spatial Practice from the TU Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include pLzZ zA, Nosbaum Reding Gallery, Luxembourg (2020) and finders keepers surface sweepers, Centre d’Art Dominique Lang, Luxembourg (2018). In 2019 he participated in the exhibition for the Robert Schuman Art Prize. Eric Schumacher is a grantee of the Ministry of Culture of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
