chronological | Artists |

Erich Reusch

Les Préludes

25.4. – 30.6.1999

Following this concept, Reusch’s works have since the 1960s developed into complex multi-part constellations of forms and energies that the artist distributes in space in an extremely pre-calculated manner. This creates energetic interrelationships called “gravitations” by Reusch which may seem both charged density and expansively relaxed, but which in any case permit a new experience of space. Especially visitors to his outdoor sculptures move in an open but precise structure in which they themselves have to define their positions.

Rarely does Reusch therefore suggest points of view, one of the few instances being his sculpture for the grounds of the Federal Administrative Centre in Munich whose monumental frame is aligned with the axis of a connecting path and thus guides the spectator’s gaze. Other than that, he tends to avoid, principally speaking, an autocratic perspective of things, because what he cares about is not so much to define them, but to question them in their formal and semantic dimensions.

This responsive sensibility certainly also characterises his work in the synagogue of Stommeln, as it is a work that strives in every way to do justice to the place and its history, and to wrest its significance from oblivion. Accordingly, the purpose of sculpture for him, here as elsewhere, is to a high degree to serve as a medium, as an instrument of exploration of, reflection on, and reaction to, given structures.

This attitude is clearly documented in Reusch’s central sculptural placement, the Plexiglas construction in the rear third of the room. It orients itself formally and axially to the ark in its niche where the scrolls of the torah used to be kept. Artfully decorated with columns, it is one of the last vestiges of Jewish worship here in Stommeln, corresponding with the gallery at the other end of the room, once reserved for female worshippers. The early exodus of Jews here in Stommeln, and the holocaust later on,

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Diashow (3 Pictures)

Synagogue Stommeln, Erich Reusch, Installation View

Installation View

Synagogue Stommeln, Erich Reusch, Installation View

Installation View