Vanessa Paschakarnis

The German-Canadian artist Vanessa Paschakarnis won this year’s Bad Homburg-Schloss Rotary Club prize for young artists. She created both the marble sculptures positioned alongside the pathway outside the Kaiser-Wilhelms-Bad during her working visits to Italy. The shape of the shield in grey Bardiglio marble in her large-scale work ”Marking One’s Presence” stems from the artist’s preoccupation with the marine sand dollar. The convex, protective outside of the shell, asserting itself outwards, and the slightly concave, restrained, and vulnerable looking back, pierced by a small hole, seem to envelop an interior space. The naturally veined stone is held up vertically by a roughly chiselled massive block of marble. As a balanced yet not at all static seeming counterpart, it conveys to the observer the conscious experience of his own physical presence. Bodily presence is also at the centre of the piece worked from red Verona marble, ”Internal Shield“. Its colour and shape in combination with the structuring of the surface give the impression of organic directness.