Kennste den?

Eric Mangen is a Luxembourg-based abstract artist. His approach towards abstraction is deeply rooted in graffiti to which he became drawn in the late 1990s. The completion of an artistic work process and the subsequent separation from the individual work are like a release, both for the artist and for the canvas. Eric Mangen’s materials are his sparring partners: the composition of the motif is followed by its destruction, reduction or redesign. The artist and the motif view each other as equal partners who have set themselves tasks. The artist’s powerful, abstract and gestural approach to painting, which is very much about movement and energy and in close relation to action painting, generates a dynamic and rhytmic yet poetical and sculptural body of work. There’s a constant conflict between controllable tools like spray cans or brushes and uncontrollable tools like his fire extinguisher, extra large spray cans and solvants. In the artist’s spontaneous approach there is always a fragile line between controlling the accident and the actual accident. Currently the artist works on a series on torn advertising paper that he started in a Berlin residency in 2021. Mangen takes off thick layers of advertising papers in the streets of Berlin and reassembles them, paints on them, leaving only the details that he wants to focus on.