Galerie Fenna Wehlau - Galerie: FREILEGUNGEN, Stephan WURMER

"There is no other material," Wurmer says, "that has as many properties as wood." Each piece, he says, grows differently, each type of wood dries differently, and thus presents the sculptor with ever new challenges. It is the naturalness inherent in the material itself that is important to him, he emphasizes. Appearance, surface texture and the respective material properties as well as the associated synesthetic effects when viewing a wooden sculpture, its transience, but at the same time also the versatile malleability and ambivalent expressiveness of wood fascinate him. Wurmer selects for his work precisely those types of wood that do not have distinctive grains. These include above all poplar, but also cedar, whose appearance suits his desire for exactness of form. This form is oriented to basic plastic geometric shapes. The sculptor thus moves within an abstract vocabulary of forms. He wrote: "Constructive, but not bound to any geometric plan - the works remain in their execution the expression of an open thought ...

Already in the title ... reference is made with 'Freilegungen' to the connection to an archaeological approach, which approaches the actual goal layer by layer. The tree in its entirety first becomes trunk and branches. After removing the bark, the artist then approaches the actual lifeline of the wood with each subsequent cut. In a figurative sense, the exposures mean not only a removal of material, but also the uncovering of new layers of knowledge." 

Sabine Heilig