Klaus Schröder

Reflections

Klaus Schröder is known for the superior mastery of balancing between painting and sculpture. His works range between freestanding wood sculptures, wood reliefs, combinations of wood and metal, as well as floor and wall sculptures or objects.

All works avoid any kind association, but explore the possibilities of pure sculpture. 

Unlike many contemporary sculptors, Klaus Schröder uses the unspectacular, and explores the more classical sculptural method, through the varied interplay of leaving and working on the piece. The characteristics are the stronger signs of working and a ‘rough‘ surface. This is not planed and polished, but the wood keeps its largely natural character.

He calls his relief work ‘panel objects’, a composite term that refers equally to the old panel painting, and to modern art objects. While some of his work (some even as a triptych) can’t deny their relationship to ‘classical murals’, others stress their closeness to sculptural form-language and explore the sense of shape in this borderline area of surface and space.

In particular the reliefs work in this area. They live from the interplay of geometric shapes, constructions and free designs.

This is also true when he extends the panel object from wood to metal, by adding a square iron frame around the wood. The compact shape of the outline, which is reinforced by the significant weight of the material, seems centered and resting in itself.

For this work he was confronted by the different powers of expression of wood and iron, which he balanced by the proportions. The dialogue of materials takes place in the creative medium of reflection. Forms repeat themselves, and are imitated in their opposites. In some works the artist has used black wood, which creates an intense color contrast to the rusty brown, reinforced by white-painted elements.

Klaus Schroeder has expanded the mix of materials to free-standing sculptures, where he uses one of his basic techniques, that of splitting and joining them together. The two materials are connected easily, and they are fitted together so that the wood pushes into the iron. This strong result makes simplified, blocky compositions, where the space is emphasized by small gaps. These compositions seem to rest in themselves. The reflections are also found here, but linked by more vivid fillers.

The differences between the two elements are emphasized in several ways: the wooden surfaces made with a chainsaw are in contrast to the texture of the welded iron. In the same way also the color of rust patina differs from the natural color of the wood that comes from poplar and elm. The different texture of rusty metal and smooth wood speaks to the viewer’s sense of touch.

His interest in the form of reduction is an example in this same series. There is a cube, composed of an isosceles wooden cross and corner pieces made of iron. It contains several possible views, especially when the individual elements in themselves are seen separately. One discovers the iron shafts, which appear high like a tower, and the symmetry of the wooden cross. The sculpture is reminiscent of Malevich‘s black wooden cross on a white ground. Malevich has described this as the ‘naked, framed Icon’ and refers it to religious painting. This relates his panel objects that are conceptually related to medieval panel painting on the one hand, and on the other as an object completely at home in contemporary art.

His works are distinguished by a liveliness that reaches through due to the interplay of geometric shapes with elements of free creation. The relaxed attitude of the sculptor to geometry prevents the works from coming together in a constructivist rigor.

In 2013 he has taken up again the abstract wall panels as a form. While the original panel objects are characterized by a more rhythmically placed incisions, he has discovered a simpler geometry in the latest Wall objects. In the areas, of wood grain and processing tracks, a few simple shapes are added in a different type of wood.

Klaus Schroeder creates ‘picture-forms’ , which make clear that geometry and vitality must not exclude each other.