© Michael Dannenmann

Gehard Demetz creates fascinatingly detailed sculptures and objects from lime wood. The introverted facial expressions and provocative poses in his figures of children invite the viewer to confront them, testifying to his strong and highly individual artistic pictorial language.

The children are usually equipped with various nightmarish props: One young boy is tied up holding holding a saw in his hands, another raises his empty hands high above his head, carrying a cross on his belt like a weapon. Demetz' works question the value system of our contemporary society by re-contextualizing religious symbols and everyday objects, thus creating new meanings.

Demetz's technical approach develops out of the craft of »Herrgottschnitzerei«, a traditional form of religious wood sculpture of great importance in his native South Tyrol. Through a constant examination of traditional techniques and figures from this genre, the artist has developed an unmistakably contemporary language. His sculptures are not created by removing the wood from a trunk, but by assembling a large number of individual pieces. Through deliberate gaps between the individual parts, Demetz points to ideas of completeness, emptiness, and fragmentation.

After completing his studies at the Fachschule für Bildhauer in Wolkenstein, Gehard Demetz worked as a lecturer there for ten years. He continued his education at the Internationale Sommerakademie für Bildende Kunst Salzburg in 2000 and 2001. In 2007 he was awarded the Richard Agreiter Art Prize for Sculpture. He lives and works in Selva in Val Gardena, Italy. His work has been shown in numerous solo exhibitions, including at the MACRO in Rome in 2016, at the Kunstverein Recklinghausen in 2013, and at the Villa Wessel Museum in Iserloh in 2008. Demetz's works have also been represented in numerous group exhibitions, for example in 2011 at the Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro in Milan, in 2010 at the Kunstmuseum Mülheim, and in 2009 at the Galleria Nazionale Palazzo Spinola in Genoa.