Aron Demetz

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Aron Demetz (* 1972 in Sterzing , South Tyrol ) is an Italian wood sculptor .

Artistic career

Aron Demetz comes from an old Ladin family of sculptors from Gröden (it .: Val Gardena , lad .: Gherdëina ); the name Demetz means translated from afar . Demetz learned wood carving from 1986 at the art school in Selva di Val Gardena and then attended the local vocational school for wood sculptors, wood carvers and barrel painters until 1993 . He oriented himself towards sculptors like Willy Verginer and other progressive Val Gardena artists. In 1997/98 he supplemented this training with a degree in sculpture with Christian Höpfner at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg .

Since then, Demetz has had a large number of international group and solo exhibitions in Europe, Asia and the USA. In January 2010 he was appointed professor of sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Carrara for three years . On the 53th Biennale in Venice his wooden sculptures ensemble was Untitled exhibited at the Italian Pavilion.

Demetz lives with his wife Anita and their two sons in Wolkenstein (lad .: Sëlva ), where he works on several sculptures at the same time in two studios with his colleagues.

Working method and individual works (selection)

Aron Demetz: Homo Erectus (2010), in front of the Arpmuseum in Rolandseck
Aron Demetz: Heimat (2014), Sculpture Bank Remagen, Rhine kilometer 635

The artist's figurative, naturalistic oeuvre also includes some bronze sculptures and works in marble or glass; Otherwise, however, Demetz works almost exclusively with different types of wood. Before Demetz puts his ideas into practice, he always first makes a miniaturized model in clay / loam as a check . From cedar , maple or walnut logs , basic shapes are then roughly worked with a chainsaw - often the bottom part of the tree also serves as a base for the life-size sculpture . After this preliminary work, Demetz peeled its final shape out of the wood with a mallet and chisel .

If such traces of work should not remain visible, the surface is finally refined with rasps and sandpaper. The actual work for him only begins with this “skin” of his mostly naked figures: Sometimes it is soaked with spruce resin he has collected from the mountains (as in Uomo | Donna 2007), smeared with it until it is unrecognizable (as in numerous senza titolo works , which were made in the following years) or charred by fire (as with Cinder Ella 2011 or the Burning Man versions up to 2013, of which he made bronze casts).

In 2014 the wood sculptor created Memoridermata, a group of nine figures whose smooth surfaces were partially “frayed” using a computer-controlled robot milling machine (Demetz programmed the chip himself). What all the figures have in common is a mysterious facial expression that sometimes makes them look like living people. In this way, Demetz deals intensively with the topic of "injury, pain, healing" and shows all his craftsmanship.

In the same year Heimat was created , his contribution to the Remagen Sculpture Bank : the bronze statue of a woman on a seemingly floating, huge tree root. It stands in a niche in the embankment near the Rhine kilometer 635.

Manfredi memorial stone (2015), Passeier promenade in Merano

In the spring of 2015 Demetz participated together with Stephan Balkenhol and Urs Lüthi in the Merano art project MenschenBilder - Figure Umane , with which a memorial is to be set for people who have any relation to the city of Merano. In addition to Balkenhol's Emma (for Emma Hellenstainer ) and Lüthi's self-portrait as Franz Kafka , while he was writing the novella "The Metamorphosis", it was the Italian poet and painter Antonio Manfredi (1912–2001) for Demetz . Alluding to a passage from his love poem Annamaria , he placed a gold-plated segment of a sphere in the tip of a seemingly raw white marble block from Carrara.

Exhibitions (selection)

(G: group exhibition, E: solo exhibition)

  • 1998: Unika , (G), Daetz-Centrum , Lichtenstein / Saxony
  • 2000: Expo 2000 , Hanover
  • 2001: Christian Höpfner and Schüler , (G), Galerie Flierl, Berlin
  • 2003: Simposio di scultura , (G), Toyama (Japan)
  • 2004: Iniziazione , (E), ex Chiesa di San Filippo Neri, Rome
  • 2005: What is realism? , (E), Albemarle Gallery, London
  • 2006: Aron Demetz , (E), Museo Archeologico, Milan
  • 2007: Italiana , (G), Shanghai Art Museum, (PR China)
  • 2009: 53rd Biennale di Venezia , Venice
  • 2010: Modern beeldhouwkunst uit Noord-Italië , (G), CODA Museum, Apeldoorn (NL)
  • 2011: Solide Fragilità , (E), Villa Bottini, Lucca
  • 2012: Advanced Minorities , (E), artdepot Innsbruck
  • 2013: Murano> <Merano / Glass and contemporary art , (G), in the house of the Sparkasse, Meran
  • 2014: I am , (E), Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck
  • 2015: SELF: Portraits of Artists in Their Absence , (G) organized by Filippo Fossati, Maurizio Pellegrin, and Diana Thompson, National Academy Museum and School , New York, (USA)
  • 2016: L´Eco della Cenere , (E), Museo de Arte e Historia de Guanajuato , Mexico

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ gazelliarthouse.com: Catalog for the group exhibition Italians Do It Better (London 2009) ( Memento from January 13, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed September 25, 2014)
  2. ↑ Otto Jägersberg : We visit Aron Demetz in Selva , in the catalog Aron Demetz - I am (p. 31–41)
  3. ↑ Burning Man , originally Herzschmerz (2012) ( Memento from February 20, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (English, accessed September 26, 2014)
  4. ↑ general-anzeiger-bonn.de: Aron Demetz 'work shows the connection between man and tree (accessed on September 26, 2014)
  5. ↑ kunstmeranoarte.org: MenschenBilder (2015) (accessed on November 2, 2016)
  6. ↑ 9/12/2004 Aron Demetz ex Chiesa di S. Filippo Neri, Roma (it., Accessed on September 26, 2014)
  7. ↑ 18/1/2007 Italiana. Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai (it., Accessed September 26, 2014)
  8. ^ Nationalacademy.org: SELF: Portraits of Artists in Their Absence. ( Memento from September 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed on September 4, 2016)

literature

  • Aron Demetz - I am (exhibition catalog of the Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck). Salon Verlag, Cologne 2014. ISBN 978-3-89770-447-3
  • L. Beatrice: Aron Demetz. Solid fragility. Catalogo della mostra (Lucca, 12 agosto – 18 September 2011) , Silvana Editoriale, Milan 2011. (Italian / English / German) ISBN 978-8-83662-153-8
  • Vittorio Sgarbi: Aron Demetz. Initiation rites. Dialogue between Aron Demetz and Alessandro Riva , Mondadori Electa, Milan 2004. (Italian / English / German) ISBN 978-8-83702-897-8

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Demetz, Aron
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian wood sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH 1972
PLACE OF BIRTH Sterzing , South Tyrol