Erich Reusch. Ohne Titel

About

The Acht Bild (2012 – 2015), Reusch’s largest multipart work on canvas to date, is the focus of the exhibition. It is complemented by new electrostatic objects and a photographic work of 1971. The exhibition is on view until November 14.

Erich Reusch, one of the most significant contemporary sculptors, best known for his sculptural interventions in space, first engaged with the idea of a “horizontal sculpture” in the mid 1950s. This term was popularized by Martin Schneckenburger at the documenta 6 in 1977, at which Reusch was prominently represented by a large sculpture situated at the Karlsaue in Kassel. Sculpture was taken down from its pedestal and transferred it to the horizontal, anticipating such concepts as the grid and linear format sculptures of the American Carl Andre. By his innovative consideration of the relationship of object and its surroundings, and the decentralization of sculpture, Reusch developed the concept we now call “site specific”. He gained wider public recognition by his experimentation with electrostatics in the 1960s. He developed Plexiglas vitrines, containing graphite pigment dust and charged them electrostatically. The Plexiglas panes attract the dust, which responds to touch by redistributing itself and settling on the panes in varying patterns. Erich Reusch synthesized his artistic process explaining „not the object, but the space is the event.“

Reusch’s method of transgressing boundaries and treating perception as agile and active, has recently expressed itself in the medium of painting. Here his gestural, expressive dashes, geometric shapes and trajectories move beyond the borders of the painted surface and still seem to locate the viewer. The constant fluctuation of geometry and movement, and the placement of triangle, square and circle within the gesture disquiet and challenge the flexibility of perception.