Drawing with steel

The solo exhibition Drawing with steel shows works by Robert Schad. At the Falconplein across the gallery, two monumental works by the artist will be installed for the duration of the exhibition.

The work of Robert Schad(1953, Ravensburg DE) always emerges from the drawing. His charcoal and pencil drawings are then being transformed into a spatial interplay of lines of straight pieces of square steel that are welded on top of each other at an angle.

Those who see Schad's work for the first time immediately sense an exciting balance in the sculptures. Although they sometimes weigh tons, they seem feather-light and almost organic. They seem to grow and integrate almost immediately into any environment: in nature, culture or architecture. The explanation for this lies in the artist's spontaneous working method. Although each length piece is ultimately determined based on intuition, we find in Schad's sculptures the proportions also found in nature. They are the proportions of a trunk versus a crown, a branch or leaf. They are the ratios specific to the human body: arm, forearm, hand, finger, ...

In 2021, on the occasion of Joseph Beuys' centenary, I recorded a podcast with Ghent artist Ronny Delrue about free drawing. One of the topics was that the systematic deployment of intuition can lead to new thinking structures that establish a direct link between memory and action. That conversation inspired me to explore Robert Schad's work more deeply from that point of view. Not coincidentally, that same year Robert Schad had a major exhibition at Schloss Moyland where the largest collection of work by Beuys is kept. The conclusion of my search was almost immediately clear: the power of the work lies in the freedom the artist allows himself in creating it. It is free drawing, drawing in space, drawing with steel.

Stijn Coppejans