Emanuel Wolfstrin magnifies waste by accumulating and arranging it into scenes with potent social and ecological messages. The door to his workshop is always open to all inhabitants of the inspiring and lively Belleville quarter in Paris. Here, he welcomes everyone into his colorful, playful, and thoughtful universe of artworks crafted from various kinds of plastic, metal, and wood waste. Both his welcoming attitude and the objects—witnesses or remnants of a wide range of human activities—turn this place into an urban island of inclusivity and diversity.
His practice also serves as an example of how collecting waste can become a collective activity, with friends and family participating in the waste collection. His continuously evolving palette of waste materials is arranged into contemporary relief installations, often affixed to white wooden boards reminiscent of the traditional manner of painting on canvas. As familiar, everyday waste emerges from these installations, we are confronted with an ironic interpretation and a strong criticism of our contemporary habits of accumulating and discarding vast quantities of plastic, paper wrappings, and unused objects.
