Rainer Schlüter,
German and Australian Permanent Resident, Master in Business Engineering, Free University Brussels, ULB, BE, got his art degree , stone carving, at the Academy of Fine Arts Braine l’Alleud, BE.He has worked and exhibited in Belgium, France, Italy and in Australia, mainly sculptures in marble, granit and basalt, but also monumental installations in exotic wood and natural fibres. Working in small as in big, Rainer has also created series of jewellery in stone and metal.
Small scale sculptures, sculpture-drawings, high and low reliefs and installations, his works are in private and public collections.
After severall years in Australia, he now lives and works in Dieulefit, in Drome, France where he has returned to his origines sculpting mainly in black marble from Belgium and white marble from Carrara, Italy.
Where does Rainer Schlüter’s stone sculpture comes from?
The process starts in the quarry, looking for and choosing the right stone, the one which already contains the traces of the future work.
Sometimes in the quarry of Carrarra (IT) for the white statutary marble, sometimes in the one of Mazy (BE) for the black marble, or in the Aosta valley (IT) for the green mable, in Chillagoe in the Far North Queensland, (AU) for its blue and golden marble,
or in the mountains of Crete (GR) or the falaises of Normandie (FR) for white chalk stone.
These stones are than worked in Rainer’s studio in the south of France.
Incisions to discover a back, a breast, anthropomorphic forms included in the stones, body fragments emerging out of the stone in harmony with its natural shape and in respect with its history and geological traces. The sculpture plays with the contrast between the rough, the crust and impurities of the stone and the finished and polished of the sculpted part.
Inspired by the “non-finiti” of Michelangelo and the body fragments of Rodin, Rainer Schlüter follows the tradition of direct carving, mainly figurative in white and black marble, more organic in coloured stones.
