Dietrich Klinge

Three powerful, figurative monumental sculptures by the German sculptor and graphic artist Dietrich Klinge are on display in the ”Blickachsen 7” exhibition. ”Gordian V”, ”Gordian VII” and ”Design for a Large Figure (E II)” can be seen a long way from their location in the Kurpark on the meadow below the Schmuckplatz. Klinge’s works look like roughly hewn wood sculptures, but are in fact without exception bronze casts in which the surface structure of the wood mould has been preserved, and whose careful patination suggests its origin in wood. In ”Gordian V” form, colour and the visible traces of the working give the impression that only the head has been worked out of a largely unworked tree-trunk. The – despite its size – rather delicate ”Gordian VII”, whose body is suggested by shoulders and arms, seems to have an almost floating lightness. The work ”Design for a Large Figure (E II)” on the other hand, unfolds a dynamic entirely of its own through the tension between powerful spatial movement and massive bodily presence – emphasized through its positioning on the lightly sloping meadow.