HA Schult

It wasn't only the big names in the art world that HA Schult found inspiring in New York. There were plenty of everyday encounters that inspired his work. "When I went to New York in the '70s, there were over 90,000 artists working as cabdrivers or waiters," says Schult. "You know the singer Madonna? She was my waitress in New York in 1976. So maybe my next waiter might be a famous artist in 20 years."

A love letter to Berlin

Despite his many activities on the other side of the Atlantic, Schult has continued to mount his art actions in Germany. In 2000, "A letter sends a signal" served as the motto for another of HA Schult's creations.

"The idea for the event 'Love Letters,'" he says, "was to make a sculpture for all people by all people. I had to ask people to work with me. There are only two things that cause change in the world -- love and hate. And I chose love."

The response was phenomenal. Within two months Schult had received 100,000 letters. "They sent me pictures, letters to their families -- even to their pets -- and from these letters I made reproductions and I built this house."

Schult took 35,000 of the letters, scanned and enlarged them and then projected the finished images onto water and fireproof slides which then adorned the façade of Berlin’s old post office. "The idea was to move the minds of the people, and this sculpture was a sculpture of love," he says.

The age of trash

Garbage is once again the leitmotif in Schult's latest work. "We are living in the time of garbage," says Schult. "We produce garbage and we will be garbage. I created a thousand sculptures of garbage. They are a mirror of ourselves." Here, Schult is referring to his 1,000 trash people, humanoids he has created from trash. He first exhibited them in 1996 at the Roman amphitheatre inside Xantene, a recreated Roman village in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

The figures triggered such an overwhelmingly positive response that he decided to take them on tour. "It is a social sculpture," he explains. "It is not only a sculpture for the eyes. It's a sculpture to spread the idea that we live in a time of garbage."

So far, Schult's social sculpture has been displayed at the Le Grand Arc de la Defence in Paris (1999), Moscow's Red Square (1999), the Great Wall of China (2001) and, most recently, the trash-army was shipped to Egypt and positioned in the desert next to the Giza pyramids near Cairo (2002).

"In Giza, I visited artists who live in another time," Schult recalls. "In Moscow it was something different, it was a very important for the country's young artists and this was also the case in China." Equally spectacular venues are slated for the installation including Australia's Ayers Rock, Switzerland's Matterhorn, Rio de Janeiro and Antarctica's icebergs.

Finding success in disaster

HA Schult's work is unforgettable. Somehow its impact stays engraved in your mind. Yet, despite the influence his work has had on the art world, Schult remains humble about his installations: "Artists have to learn every time, that is their profession. We are not important. All that is important is the time in which we are living."

He says he actually looks forward to less-triumphant events. "For every artist, a disaster is the material from which he can find new things. From this point work can start again," he says.

He then takes a big breath, and laughs.

"I am looking forward to my next disaster," he says.

Breandáin O'Shea