THE ANCIENT WORLD – ROLE MODEL AND INSPIRATION? German-Polish open-air event for sculpted figures at Schloss Trebnitz from 28 July to 22 August 2021

Roswitha Schaab

The Kouros formula that was taken up by the Egyptians also inspired this artist. She maintains the strict form of the figure, but concentrates on inscribing its surface. In this way, she creates a meticulous notebook containing personal reflections over the course of time, a type of intimate artistic legacy with which she imparts some key features of reality to posterity. Each touch of the chisel is planned by the sculptor and created so consciously that the next one is conditional upon it.

Ryszard Litwiniuk

The centaur symbolises the duality of human nature encountered half as a God and half as a beast. The torso of the hybrid being is like a human, the lower body was borrowed from a horse. The most well known representative in mythology was the wise and compassionate Chiron. Inspired by this hybrid figure, the artist turned his attention to a female form and referred to the oldest prehistoric sculpture of the Venus of Willendorf. His work is also inspired by the idea of the Trojan horse, which is to be understood here as a modern reference to the lurking danger of viruses. This work leans on the figure of the “Lauschenden” which was created by Gustav Seitz in 1968.

The artist duo Super Vivaz (Lina Baltruweit/Johannes Braunringer)

An ideal of the ancient Greeks existed in the Kalogathia, setting beauty on a par with goodness. In this sense, the deformation of the human body was associated with evil. Recreated in the style of the sculpture by Gustav Seitz entitled “Entwurf zur großen Danae”, which was produced in 1967, as well as classical representations of the odalisque, the white slave in the harem, the artist pair has created an idealised sculpture which is based on the present canon and which addresses luxury. The work, which is ready made, shows a figure on a chaise longue playing with a modern acquisition, a mobile phone, which has an app for processing photos with beauty filters. By criticising our excessive consumption, the artists ask how the barriers of good and evil, beauty and ugliness, truth and lie manifest in life and in art. They also encourage us to think about how these things have changed over time.  

Susanne Ring

This sculpture is a group of objects made of clay, a material which dictates how the artist works because of the way it constantly changes. Susanne Ring exploits this property. The potter’s wheel came into being during the period to which the work refers which makes the classic form of an amphora a natural starting point for the artist. But her amphora are amorphous, they start to resonate with each other and multiply. The structure, which is developed consistently, is more pronounced and the form is constantly improved. But because there is no purely intellectual or purely intuitive art, the constant refining of the form is not Susanne Ring’s goal; instead it is a means that recalls the roll of the votive figure in the Early Archaic period, and a type of artistic meditation.

Magda Potorska, September 2021