Hans Schuele is, aside from his work with graphics and different metals, a steel sculptor. He managed to use his preferred material over and over in many different variations in the course of his artistic development, which began in the 1990´s. Sometimes his sculptures are open, delicate, almost transparent, now and then they are rather closed, dense, self-contained so to say. Some appear quiet, calm; whereas others seem utterly agile, almost as if they were moving. At times they can take up the whole room, but every so often they present themselves as compact, three-dimensional works of art. Soft, rounded, organic shapes contrast with angular, cuspid ones. A lot of pieces are made of iron steel; but recently Hans Schuele has taken to varnishing his sculptures, thus altering their appearance decidedly. The “Werkstattpreis“, awarded to him by the Erich Hauser Art Foundation in 2000, lead the sculptor, born in 1965 in Neckarsulm back to the German south-west. More important than the change of place was that Schuele was able to improve his abilities, which he gained at the art academies of Berlin and Munich, by working in Hauser`s workshop and later his own. He was able to combine the technical and formal possibilities that steel involves with his already recognizable serial approach and his wish to develop new and unique shapes. Long ago there is an independent creation – describable as surprisingly versatile, polymorphic and variable. Frank Nievergelt found that Hans Schueles sculptures are always developed „so that like with various species of one genus completely different forms within one family may be realised.” With the 2015 for a global company realised large-scale sculpture the span of this oeuvre reaches from small-scale sculptures to monolithic opuses for the interior as well as the outdoor space.

Hans Schuele expedites the development of his art in series. This approach becomes apparent if, as implemented in the exhibition in the art museum in Singen, several sculptures of one series of works are presented together and in relation to one another.

The dark, material sediment-works of the 2000s with their taut and blued external skin appear like pieces thrown into the real space – strange and familiar at the same time, as if a giant had cut out chunks of a greater entity with a vast pie knife. Their special virtue bears on the evident contrast between smooth, clearly defined and limited surfaces on the one hand and forged edges on the other hand that are powerfully constructed with few uprising bubbles, but mostly provided with smooth, bowl-like indentations. These adversatively designed surfaces collide unexpectedly along sharp burrs – increasing the effect of the fragmentary, the large-dimensioned, the surprising. Likewise, the sculptures of this series rear up or sag as if a hidden force was operating within them. The beholder gets the impression that they want to overcome the ground on which they lair or snuggle in the corners between floor and wall.

By way of contrast, the black or white lacquered works of art of the series Fraktale that are being created since the 2010s are dynamic, firmly acting powerhouses. “Spacy” is a term that visitors of the exhibition consistently use to characterise these wall-oriented artworks. The Fraktale are composed of cultrate, welded resp. chamfered sheet steels of irregular cutting that are being merged into splintery-open entities. At that, they either outline empty space that is given to the Fraktale as an imaginary power core, or they diverge explosively into all directions. Vistas on the wall or the floor open up and the sculptures expand by their own shadows that become a part of the artworks. This expansion of the form is particularly impressive for the white lacquered works of art on the wall when they are heavily illuminated, casting long shadows on the wall. An inversion takes place: While the light almost blanks out the white surfaces of the Fraktale, the shadows of the object become the primarily perceived structure.

Schueles light, open Hybride are, different again, composed of single, usually equal rings – actually pipe sections – in a serial fashion. In their addition, the rings evolve into smooth, roundly formed, organically moved spheric formations that stand freely in space, seem to fall or lean against the wall of the exhibition room. Similar to molecular cell structures that spread into different directions, they stride into the surrounding and make contact with one another across the room. Of a geometrically simple, technical-industrially processed, uniform basic module, the sculptor builds complex, amorphous entities that awaken memories of meshed formations in nature. Vistas take the gravity from the volumes. The surrounding space is taken into the sculptures’ interior. At that it remains unclear whether the shroud merely outlines a lost core or whether the skeleton of the exterior skin only builds this corpus. Here, too, we encounter the characteristic working principle of Hans Schuele: All single artworks are, albeit designed as autonomous entities, imaginable as potentially expandable and may be brought together as installations. Since single spheres are superimposed onto one another on different spatial levels and coincide oscillatory, Schueles Hybride pull the beholder close and challenge them to skirting. The shifting of the formation to the surface and in the space, the sensual return of the shape, the strange-familiar of the modules becomes particularly apparent in close-up view.

What unifies Hans Schueles attitude throughout all work series is his unusual sensibility for his material and the extension of the three-dimensional space, which is unlocked by Schueles sculptures. It is not the case that the beholder does not know about these possibilities mentally– however, in observation of Schueles sculptures they sensually become aware of them.

Hans Schuele draws his artworks entirely on his material and on the technical and formal possibilities of the steel sculpture. Solids are not constructed from replicas; no shape is positioned against the space. Hans Schuele constructs his sculptures out of simple, recurring modules, that are being complected to a mostly open, always new, thereby complex and electric overall structure. Schueles empathy into organic processes, the perseverance with which he develops structures over longer periods of time, the capability of compressing the shape – these are essential qualities of the artistic work of Hans Schuele. And: Although every shape is preserved in the description of objects, his abstract sculptures evoke analogies of soulful, moved solids, that act fluctuating in their element, the space. It is the accordance between the operating forces and the technical design, that bias us towards Schueles subtle, yet natural seeming sculptures. How vibrant, lucid in fluency, spatially open the seemingly cold, bulky-hard steel sculpture can be today, is shown by Schueles artworks. They act on the thin line between palpable materiality and incomprehensible scope, between form and gesture.

Christoph Bauer, Director Kunstmuseum Singen