Edvardas Racevičius

Edvardas Racevičius was born in 1974 in Lithuania and has long been fascinated by the traditional and folkloric representations of sculpture. After 10 years of art-oriented school, he decided to enter the Catholic seminary, studying theology and social pedagogy at the University of Vilnius, planning to become a priest and change the world. He stayed there for three years. Since 2002, he has been living in Greifswald, a small university town in Germany, where he has been able to study Western approaches to sculpture. His artistic practice is inspired by the dialogue between his Lithuanian origins and his new home in Germany, connecting Eastern and Western traditions.

At the age of 17, he made his first sculpture in oak by sketching the shapes with an ax. This experience was dazzling for him and totally different from working with clay, plaster or stone. He was thrilled with the material and decided to work with wood from then on. At first, he began to experiment with abstract sculptures, then with figurative. His work is procedural: it starts rather brutally with a chainsaw, then uses more delicate tools to identify the forms and refine them. The figures of his pieces are connected to the base of the branch or trunk, and it may be thought that this connection is part of a larger truth in his artistic practice. The pieces of Edvardas Racevičius deal with the philosophical relationship between humans and nature.

In the series Trees and Humans, his figures are carved in a block of wood and are connected to the remaining branches and the abstract forms divided. It is really important for the artist that wood as a material, remains visible. The level of abstraction of the figures also become visible in the branches, bark and torn grain of the wood. Faced with the figure dissolved in the material, the spectator questions themselves concerning the relationship between humans and nature: where does the wood finish and the human figure begins? Where does the border between the self and the world begin? Who are we?

Edvardas Racevičius unveiled his art for the first time at the Berliner List in 2013. The result was a success, consequently he was able to establish new contacts with galleries and collectors.