The two-time documenta organizer and internationally influential art critic Manfred Schneckenburger described Erich Reusch as a “pioneer in decentralized space”. Reusch developed his revolutionary floor sculptures already in 1957. He focused on the gravitational relationship of decentralized forms to each other, regardless of their specific weight and the resulting ground pressure. In doing so – years before Carl Andre and Richard Serra – he freed sculpture from a plinth and the associated vertical orientation. Reusch thus became a pioneering artist of international contemporary art.
Reusch was one of the very first artists to develop his sculptures and installations as kinetic and acoustic artworks, designing his artworks to sculpturally activate the space in the context of the surrounding space. Erich Reusch’s sculptures can be found in important public spaces and museum collections throughout Germany.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Erich Reusch became known for his “electrostatic objects”. Inside the cubes or tubes made of Plexiglas are highly micronized hydrophobic pigments. The particles lying on the ground symbolize the possible changeability. The pigment particles are deposited in layers, blurs and shades of gray in interaction with the viewer. Erich Reusch studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Berlin from 1947 to 1953 and then worked as an architect in Düsseldorf until 1964. From 1964, Reusch increasingly turned to sculpture. In 1975, he was appointed professor for “Integration of Fine Arts and Architecture” at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, where he taught for 25 years and was deputy director for several years. In 1977, he took part in the documenta in Kassel with a large floor sculpture. In 2010, Erich Reusch was made an honorary member of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.
Until the 1990s, Erich Reusch created large outdoor sculptures not only in minimalist concrete and steel, but also in bright colors. His abstract paintings are still undergoing constant changes in an unbroken creative process.
“Reusch understands space as a pulsating, cosmic movement, as an unlimited dynamic continuum and in this sense as the one absolute space without end and without direction.” Volker Adolphs, 1998
