Eric Andersen Born in Antwerp 1940. Living in Copenhagen, Denmark. One of the first Fluxus artists. If the anti-art label can be attributed to anyone it's Eric Andersen. He tries through his actions and neologisms to vex and disorientate the public as much as possible. He may have been born in Antwerp in 1940 or in Copenhagen in 1942 but not in New York in 1935. Much the same is true of his carefully numbered works, which he claims make up an ‘opus’. No two works bear the same number. But what was yesterday Opus 31 may today be Opus 32 and tomorrow Opus 2015.
In his Opus works of the early 1960s he looked mainly into the open interaction between a performer and his public, developing open self transforming works: ‘arte strumentale’. In the late 1960s he turned to mail art then in the 1970s was keenly concerned with geographical space. His most eminent works include ‘Hidden Paintings’, ‘Crying Spaces’, ‘Confession Kitchens’, ‘Lawns that turn towards the Sun’ and ‘Artificial Stars’.
Andersen was often a guest in the former East. In 1966, he held a three-day event in Prague with the Fluxus artists Tomas Schmit and Arthur Köpcke. This and the actions by Milan Knížák are said to have been the first Fluxus events in Czechoslovakia. Through the 70s and 80s Andersen repeatedly headed east, especially to Poland, where he performed for instance in Jarosław Kozłowski‘s Galeria Akumulatory 2 in Poznań and in the Galeria Potocka in Krakow.
