ABOUT THE ART
He first exhibited in 2012 as part of the group show Geography, Alice! curated by Adolfina de Stefani. Concurrently, he channeled his theatrical side by playing the Mad Hatter in the video art piece What About Alice? and in a performance for Doris Ortiz during the 69th Venice Film Festival (both short films by Daniele Sartori).
In 2013, he exhibited at an event marking the 51st anniversary of the G.B. Piranesi Artistic and Cultural Center, led by Professor Giancarlo Zaramella.
During the 55th Venice Art Biennale, he met the artist Massimo Casagrande, with whom he began collaborating for the cultural association Vernice Contemporanea. Together, they have created the performance Lamento sul Bianco (premiered at the Teatro Sociale in Cittadella) and curated the exhibition Lei ha caldo al culo, a tribute to Dadaism and the myth of the Mona Lisa.
During the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale, the artist exhibits as part of the extraMOENIA project (by Adolfina de Stefani), engaging in a dialogue with Emmanuele Panzarini’s “No More Landmarks".
The year concludes with the solo exhibition Compensazioni (ed altri incidenti).
In 2015, the artist returns to a focus on physicality alongside performer L o V, creating Arc.Hum—a performance based on the Tarot—which is presented at the Vernissage of the Photissima Art-Fair Festival at the Basilica dei Frari in Venice.
In the spring, the Lunapark for Ghosts TOUR (with L o V) kicks off; the artist participates in the group exhibition La Corrispondenza del Tutto (curated by Adolfina de Stefani) and holds another solo exhibition (“Compendium”) in Marano Vicentino. That same year, the artist is a finalist for the “Il Segno 2015” prize in Ferrara and curates two workshops on contemporary art (in Mestre and Cittadella). In 2016, the artist takes part in the Premio Renato Nardi exhibition in Venice—a city to which return in 2018 for the group exhibition The Man's Art curated by Loreta Larkina.
The work “Lobotomia” is featured in Silvia Landi’s book Arte Contemporanea 2017 and in the Pordenone Arte 2019 catalog—an event in which the artist participated alongside the cultural association XXII Secolo from Palmanova.
In 2021, he joined Perfume Art Creation—a Zurich-based gallery managed by Goar Sekhian Sanfilippo—creating a series of reinterpretations of classic works featuring Marcel Duchamp’s Rotoreliefs, which were exhibited during the solo show Arche at the gallery's Venice location.
In 2026, he was among the winners of the Dal Museo alla Fiera exhibition in Terni, a selection that earned him the opportunity to exhibit at the Vernice Art Fair in Forlì.
ABOUT THE MUSIC
The stage name chosen is a tribute to Johann Strauss II, an artist with whom he comes into "contact" thanks to an audio cassette (a gift from his paternal grandparents) whose opening piece is An der schönen blauen donau, a famous Viennese waltz.
The 2010 trip to Berlin is enlightening: he discovers the minimal/deep tech sounds he had never encountered in Italy. He then began to propose this style in his DJ sets during the evenings of underground clubs in the provinces of Treviso and Padua.
The aesthetic presented as a DJ revisits the performative one of David Bowie, an artist of strong inspiration as a symbol of continuous renewal and experimentation. Erik listens to the jazz of Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk as well as the electronica of Aphex Twin, Ricardo Villalobos or the Bristol Trip-Hop by Tricky, Massive Attack and Portishead.
The first EPs White Paper (2011), Untitled (2017), All this blue is about happiness (2020), I am sure I am happy (2021) as well as the album Urbanature (2020), outline the trip-hop/downtempo period.
Between 2018-2019 he released some instrumental ambient/chill tracks under the french label Nuit Blanche Records.
During 2020 and 2021 he host is own radio show SINE LINEA at Radio Vanessa, italian independent radio base in Venice.
In 2021, with Shawn Lee's approval, he released the official instrumental cover of Kiss the Sky under Ubiquity Records, the same label as the original author.
The album FTUR (2024) leads him to experiment further, fusing the previous beats with sounds that oscillate between ambient and IDM, a genre addressed in an "embryonic" way in the first independent EP "White Paper" (2011).
But it is with METAFISICA (2025) and QUIDDITAS (2026, under Isulatronic, an italian label) a single that consolidates the search for new sounds, that he outlines a path inspired by philosophical concepts, by the expression of ES, a term that contains the initials of his stage name.
Erik Strauss (Treviso, 1984) began his artistic career in 2009.
