Letters for a Lover

Eric Löbbecke

22 October - 16 November 2024

THE PROFUNDITY OF MY PATERNAL GRANDPARENT’S WARTIME LOVE STORY

When we lose a significant other along the way without answers for their disappearance, emotions are mixed and unrequited.

My grandmother escaped the advancing Russian army in Silesia during WWII. She and the four children moved in with her brother in Vienna. Her husband’s homecoming never eventuated, so she contributed money towards the restoration of the suburb’s Rochuskirche’s Bell. According to my father, she walked to mass every morning to hear the bell, a memory of her husband.

I’m interested in tapping into these feelings, investigating this liminal state visually through an iterative multidisciplinary artistic approach. My methodology is increasingly nuanced these days, with the use of sculpture in different mediums, reflecting a visceral response from its inception. It evolves through a series of 2D mark making processes to extract an ethereal response.

In essence I want the multi medium approach to bring the viewers empathetically to the unravelling emotional narrative and sometimes this process may not necessarily manifest beauty, and may provoke other responses deeply questioning our humanity.

My grandfather’s wartime disappearance has been my focus for the past 10 months, and I have documented it on my Socials, especially instagram.

I have produced ten sculptures and numerous digitally painted works I call my sketches which I then use for the final stage of the process to compose the exhibited oil paintings on canvas.

Letters for a lover is my latest body of “work in progress” and a continuation of my fascination and response to “Random Thoughts” within a liminal poetic state of existence.