Erika Lieschen Briel
Born 1986
Colorado, USA
Currently residing and working in London, UK.

2011
MFA Fine Art Media; Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London, U.K.
2008
BFA Art History; Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, USA

My art practice can be understood as a process of developing knowledge and then processing a relationship over time; allowing ideas to become something more than just existing as is - a poetic activation. In the Spring of 2011, I designed and upholstered my first architectural space; a nomadic trunk to house my collection of investigations about the material steel. The idea of the nomadic space developed and evolved from my personal narrative titled, Never/Or Always And/Or; Methodology to a Process: Process to Entering my House, where I guide the reader through a series of descriptive spaces that each represent a space to investigate ideas. Upon entering this house, there are many rooms. Inside one of the bedrooms there is an entrance into a dream. This dream is a reoccurring actual experience in my daily life. In a sense, it is a bridge into another playground within a playground.

The story behind the work, Romanticism of a Nomadic Space: N* 03032011:
In the Autumn of 2009, I had found these two handheld ‘models’ (essentially scrap metal) of steel in the Slade Workshop. Existing as scraps, I examined the materiality of the simple and sharp angles cut along the once whole L-bracket shape. Exploring through the lens of a camera and the wash of a paintbrush, the metal qualities evolved. The scraps took on a new meaning and catalyst to explore the materiality of steel with the variables of space and light constructing a new language.

I constructed larger scale versions of the handheld models. I walked through these structures trying to figure out my spatial relationship to the environment. From there, the study evolved into crushing the steel structures. At that moment, something extraordinary happened. The once formal and smooth flat surface of the steel transformed into a silk like quality of blanketing folds of metal. I found myself referencing through poetry and architects, as well as sculptors like Richard Serra to better articulate my visual and physical journey. In short, the hand held experience of material was a journey to explore a deep sensibility of experience. As if each phase was describing something totally familiar. As I’d I had known what was being activated and never said it myself. The visual language and verbal articulation came through many different vehicles: photography-painting-drawings-re-photographing; each negotiated a process of language that revealed a new.

Images: Slade MFA Degree Show, 2011, London UK:
Engineering > Evolving Articulation: Installation includes 20 original mono-prints, hand-made/original wallpaper design, Upholstered Shelf with Books (my own bound writings), and self designed/upholstered Trunk with original Silkscreen Prints.