“A tree is static with its roots, always in the same place. That's why my figures are relatively static, not moving. Because they emerge from the tree trunk, my sculptures are only a certain size. But that's also why they have this vertical position. No movement.”
Aron Demetz, 2023
Aron Demetz's (born 1972 in Sterling, Südtirol) figurative-naturalist oeuvre consists almost exclusively of works in various types of wood, complemented by a few bronze sculptures and works in marble or glass.
From cedar, maple or walnut tree trunks, he makes roughly machine-sawn basic forms - often using the lowest part of the trunk as the base for the life-size sculpture. After this preliminary work, Demetz uses a hammer and chisel to carve her final form from the wood.
If such traces of work are not to remain visible, the surface is finally refined with rasps and sandpaper. It is with this "skin" of his mostly naked figures that the real work begins for him: sometimes it is soaked with spruce resin collected in the mountains (as in Uomo | Donna 2007), smeared beyond recognition (as in numerous senza titolo works created in subsequent years), or even charred by fire (as in Cinder Ella 2011 or the Burning Man versions until 2013, of which he made bronze casts).
Aron Demetz (1972, born in Sterling, South Tyrol) studied wood sculpture at the art school in Selva in Val Gardena from 1986 and then attended the local regional vocational school for wood sculptors, wood carvers and barrel painters until 1993. In 1997/98 he completed this training by studying sculpture with Christian Höpfner at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg.
Since then Demetz has had a number of international and museum-based 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. At the 53rd Venice Biennale, his wooden figure ensemble Untitled was exhibited in the Italian Pavilion. At the 59th Venice Biennale, the artist again was invited to exhibit his works, this time in the national pavilion of Ivory Coast.