Encounters

Encounters

On this website about my sculptural work, three main categories have been distinguished: "Heads", "Possible faces", and "Encounters".  The first category concerns approaches to heads, without narrative interpretation, without explicit references. The intention is to approach the phenomenon "Head" strictly formally. The sculptural design is the challenge. 

In the category "Possible faces", the approach is different.  It's about visual translations of figures from Greek mythology. I try to imagine people from the traditions that have been preserved in epic stories and poems, and in archetypes, settled in the collective unconscious (Jung). I try to give those people and the ideas they stand for, a “possible face”. I often turn one of the figures into different representations. I call them "stages" of an idea,  which are differentiations of a mode of expression. 

The third category of appearances of my sculpture I call "Encounters". Through the use of photos I confront one or more of my sculptures with other copies of my work, and with sculptures by others. I put pictures next to, or over each other to see what happens, how they influencethey each other. Sometimes there is a conscious connection between the works, for example in the case of Agamemnon and his war booty Kassandra, on their way from Troy to Mykene, on their way to Klytaimnestra, the vengeful wife of Agamemnon. I combined my sculpture of Agamemnon with a sculpture by the German sculptor Max Klinger (1857 – 1920), photographed in the Leopold Museum in Vienna. Hektor, the intended heir to the throne of Troy, who died in a battle with the Greek hero Achilles, is depicted twice. Woven in is the photograph of the sculpture of Andromache, his wife. The tragedy hides in the awareness of both of them about their fate and future suffering. Hektor was conscious of suffering defeat against the greatest hero of the Greeks. Andromache foresaw her fate, as a future widow with a young child who would not survive. 

Sometimes in the category "Encounters" there is no direct narrative connection between the sculptures, but I hope that this connection arises in the image. An example is the photo of a nymph's head from the “Hygieia-spring” behind Hamburg City Hall, made by the German sculptor Joseph von Kramer (1841 – 1908). I have combined a nymph’s head with a head of Persephone, made by me. I call the duplication "Korai amongst each other".Young  girls they are, girls among each other. For me, it's all about meeting, about contrasting work, and about the added value of such a seemingly accidental encounter of strange couples.