ICH-DU

Description

Born in Germany, Bernd Lohaus lived and worked in Antwerp. Both places play a role in the artist's work. His use of materials and language are particularly characteristic. Lohaus usually worked with wood he found while walking along the Scheldt River. This was either washed-up wood or wood used in the harbor; material that had already lived a life before it ended up in the artist's studio. Its traces remain visible in the finished artwork. Lohaus never altered the nature of his materials, making only minor interventions.

He applied words with chalk or by scratching them into the material (as in memorials that commemorate someone or something that has passed). They involve opposing concepts or words, refering to the distance between people and things, how they can position themselves in relation to each other in various relationships, yet never actually coincide. Lohaus's work explores the relationship between "Ich" and "Du" (I and you), between the artist, the viewer, and the artwork, but also between people and between people and things in general. Lohaus was a student of Joseph Beuys at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

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