Olga Schulz
Born 1981 in Marbach am Neckar, Germany.
2001 – 2008 studies in Visual Communication/Experimental Space Concepts at Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach am Main, Germany
2008/2009 DAAD scholarship (German Academic Exchange Service)
My work approaches landscape sculpturally – and the emphasis lies on approaching as I am interested in artistic as well as social practice as a means of breaking open conventional ideas of sculpture and landscape. I literally move within this area because walking forms the departure point for many of my works. During my studies in Glasgow I repeatedly set out on walks to its periphery to record the clash of the “civilized” and the “savage.” The evolving collection of photographs, drawings and texts form a growing archive from which I am able to begin my sculpturally inspired investigation of an area that is driven by chance and change. The developed works are proposals that move within this dialectical landscape and represent a range of responses from the trivial and the sublime, the imagined and the derelict, the polluted and the primordial, the lit up and the dark. The unruly and unpredictable laws of materials and techniques fuel the conceptual investigation of two opposing elements – the rigid and controlling nature of “centrality” opposes the improvised tactics found at the fringes of a city. It is the improvisational elements I am interested in transferring into my sculptural practice to challenge the picturesque and the designed. The process of craft demands skills, and aims for perfection but it also bears failure and, therefore, feeds back into aspects of its origin – peripheral landscape.