Erik Mai

Erik Mai, born in Dresden in 1963, trained as a carpenter and furniture maker, worked in the building and furniture restoration and has been working as a sculptor and graphic artist for a long time.

In 1996, he moved to Berlin and founded the Atelierhof Spandau, where painters and sculptors have their studios, among them Helge Leiberg and Hans Scheib. Readings, exhibitions and musical events take place regularly at this wonderful location.

Since 2014, Erik Mai has been working on 22 stone heads, based on the “Dying Warriors” by Andreas Schlüter. In November of this year, the project is supposed to be finished and, as you can imagine, remembers the end of the First World War 100 years ago.
Erik Mai is a man of crafts; he is the artist-craftsman in the best sense, a type that hardly exists anymore. In Renaissance times, the artist-craftsman was a matter of course; today he seems to have almost fallen a little out of time. (In the wonderful novel “Colas Breugnon” by Romain Rolland, you can still find him in all his nature.)
Erik doesn’t talk much and doesn’t like to talk about art, much rather about stone, a material he prefers to wood. The material as a gift of nature, with which the artist should work in a responsible manner. This respect for the material, however, does not influence the form. In art, Erik is completely free and succeeds in breathing life into these very stones and inspiring them. For that is what art is all about, the revival of the material; this distinguishes it from mere craftsmanship.
And Erik Mai as a graphic artist – very beautiful the drypoints, whether depicting insects or dying warriors.
Erik’s artwork leads us back somehow to the beautiful topsoil ground, to the contemplative looking at the simple and truly important things in life.
Carsten Gille, Frauenstein (Saxony) 2018