The motto I have chosen for my life and my artwork
"Contribute to the beauty of the world"
My Artist Statement
Creating my light stones I let myself inspire by nature. By the sky, the clouds, by water and fire, all things that are volatile, hardly palpable and at least to a certain degree filled with light.
The intangibility and permanent change inherent to all these natural phenomena, stands in contrast to our perception of the earth as something firm, and unchangeable.
A deceptive perception, as anyone knows who has ever experienced an earthquake or the eruption of a volcano, or simply had to fix settlement cracks in the plastering of their houses.
Inadvertently the question comes to mind, what remains if our assumed securities falter, if something we want to hold on to desperately, inevitably slips from our hands.
Which values do still apply, if a hard material like stone, seemingly made for eternity, all at a sudden dissolves into light?
I also ask this question with my other sculptures, with my fragile stelae for example, or with my sculptures of houses in all imaginable instable or precarious situations.
What remains of the idea of the safety of your home, your own four walls, which, in our thoughts our house stands for once it is torn from its usual context?
Naturally also my boat sculptures are inspired by the idea of change. Albeit a boat, in contrast to a house, from the outset is a symbol for travel and insecurities going along with it, for new things, for transitions, in short for change.
And thus change is the only certainty which remains to us reliably.
Brutal but sensitive, how I develop a new, modern visual language in sculpture
Modern disc-cutting tools such as a "Flex" - the common name for all disc-cutting and grinding machines, at least among German-speaking sculptors and stonemasons (after the first "Flex" by Ackermann + Schmitt), are normally used for rough removal work on the stone in order to save time.
After that, traditional hand tools are usually used again, with the intention to erase the traces of the modern tool and to give the impression of traditional craftsmanship.
My approach is different.
I try to exploit the possibilities of the Flex to the utmost. I don´t want the tool marks to disappear, on the contrary they are an essential part of my sculptures.
The loud, potentially dangerous, seemingly rough, brutal tool offers processing options that the traditional tools do not offer, or only offer to a very limited extent.
The Flex allows me to remove very large chunks of stone as well as to achieve the finest chiseled structures.
It is possible to make the stone translucent over large areas, thereby creating a completely new form of stone sculpture.
In my translucent works, I use modern tools to develop a new, modern language of form that is completely different from that of traditional stone sculpture.
Interestingly, many people do not perceive this language of form as modern, in the sense of objective, mechanical or cool, but, on the contrary, as very poetic.
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Sculpting classes in Italy, Unleash your inner Michelangelo
