Erwin Heerich

Styrofoam models, 1980s

Heerich’s styrofoam sculptures were preceded by long years of examining how shapes were formed in the third dimension, preferably using simple cardboard, which he folded, cut and glued together. For Heerich cardboard, like polystyrene, had no specifically aesthetic or historical connotations, the materials are value-neutral to the largest possible extent, which is an important quality for him. They also last for a limited period only – Heerich says this is a crucial criterion for his work. He is not concerned with the manifestation of an art object, but with making an idea material in terms of a specific problem: how space can be presented and formed. His sculptures open up multiple perspectives and surprising insights into spatial structures and their physical qualities. Heerich seems to start work by imagining a boundless, in-definable space, from which he derives a minimalistic volumes that are constantly surprisingly new.