Ville de Dudelange - Dominique Lang / Nei Liicht

Characterised by a sensitivity to the contested aesthetics of our communal environment in relation to processes of craft and construction, Eric Schumacher’s artistic approach re-imagines recycled forms and materials as perceptual tools. His idiosyncratic sculptural language is simultaneously heartfelt and tongue-in-cheek, embracing a spatial complexity reflective of social questions that often results in a critical yet playful pathos. 

The artist frequently contrasts generic elements from our over-commodified built environment with the transformative qualities of experimental handmade techniques. This paradox is at the centreof the exhibition Driveway Gate Inspiration whose key series of works, Trespassers (2025), transform banal grid patterns typical of metal barrier structures into sculptural relief panels that are clearly marked by their handmade construction process. Full of textural character, the panels humanise an otherwise banal reference to common industrial patterning, whilst the ironic humour of the exhibition title itself emphasises the artist’s approach to both critically examine and to celebrate the ‘everyday’ from a socially minded perspective. The wall-hung panels fold out into space with angled flaps that transform the reliefs into sculptural forms, further questioning the ontological status of these idiosyncratic objects that are simultaneously ornament and artwork, painting and sculpture, and that serve both critical and poetic functions.

If found elements often ‘creep’ into Schumacher’s current work, they emerge transfigured by the artist’s practice that presses loaded, ‘real world’, signifiers into aesthetic punctuation. The reference to protective barriers could be seen as a comment on the disappearance of public space as it is currently cannibalised by privatisation, commercialism and de-humanised investment. For the Trespassers series, Schumacher relocated the shells of brown garden snails from his studio walls directly on to the works. The snails wonderfully emphasise the textural qualities of the relief’s distressed surfaces, bringing perspective to the distinction between public and private space and evoking the unbound powers of nature, whilst also referring to a variety of human journeys.

The Trespassers series emerged from a previous sequence of patterned reliefs titled Diamonds are Forever(2025) that reference diagonal window grate designs with delicate and at times transparently thin panels. If the Diamonds are Forever series play fragility against protection, by unfolding into space Trespassers accentuates the territorial qualities of the public versus private debate. Further works in the exhibition develop the qualities of this dynamic in expanded ways. In fact, the exhibition’s opening artwork is a recent remake of an Otto Hajek public sculpture from 1955/6. By referring to an existing post-war abstract artwork characterised by a rough Brutalist finish, Schumacher invokes this era of ‘democratic’ public reconstruction with its generous sense of civic space and genuine aesthetic.

The Hajek remake provides an initial aesthetic touchstone for the exhibition’s predominantly wall hung works mentioned above, all of which were created from acrylic composite that is shaped from sculpted polystyrene. Brushed with layers of resin and silicone to create inverse reliefs before the foam mould is ripped away, this technique creates a highly textured sculptural surface. Messy and meticulous, the handcrafted moulding process evokes mass and void, public and private, and display and shelter, creating an unpredictable formal dynamic between schematic design and decomposition. 

Complementing this collection of subtly textured wall-hung works, and in contrast to the generosity of public art, two spatial panels mimicking advertising hoarding from the Relief Structures (2022) series further punctuate the exhibition. Stylised à la mass-market advertising, raised words are placed diagonally on these panel surfaces, hinting at their commercial logic whilst establishing placeholders that refer to the psychological significance and spatial implications of the capitalist framework of social life. 

If the exhibition Driveway Gate Inspiration celebrates often overlooked aspects of shared experience through the textural poetry of patterned relief, it simultaneously performs a critical dialogue between public and private space, rethinking psycho-social territories in terms of its subtle, yet playful, sculptural range. A topographic and tactile allegory of communal life comes into focus, encouraged by the snails at large, allowing both artificial, human and non-human perspectives on our everyday environment.