Jo was born in Ulm, Germany, in 1964. A recipient of a Liberal Arts PhD from the University of Pecs, Hungary, he has participated in many exhibitions and has numerous commissioned works in Germany and other countries. He has participated in over 35 previous symposia.
2012 Symposium
My abstract work is rooted in the intensive way I deal with archetypal symbols and the study of nature, which have always been the model for man’s artistic creations. Ladders, towers, stars, crystals, spirals and knots constitute the central themes which, with strength and imagination, I try to commit to the stone. I am fascinated by the classical works of Michelangelo, Bernini or Thorwaldsen, yet also by the early works of Ancient Greece, whose evocative mythological layers often provide the inspirational material of my (stony) dreams and work of classical deities.
What do I do? Normally I try to give the stone a fitting form using the means available to me. The work process opens my eyes and my perception. While I am working – chiselling, polishing, and making dust – new ideas arise for the next forms. For me the work process is at least as exciting as the finished sculpture. The form which remains at the end tells of its conception, revealing or mystifying – for at the end a small secret always remains. The form needs to have a certain power; it needs to breathe and be alive, to attract the observer’s attention. I see my work as constant practising, working at my manual skills as well as tackling the material. And stone is my favourite material to work with.
People who have visited the museums and antique sites can see that certain sculptures, created over some thousand years ago, still look today as if they had just been finished yesterday. To stand in front of such a sculpture has sometimes taken my breath away and deeply moved me. And it is of no importance at all what the sculptor had in mind back then. Just like the sculptor in antiquity, in a couple of hundred years I will be unable to stand beside my work and comment on it. What is important is that the observer is moved by the sculpture. It speaks its own language, so it is irrelevant what language the sculptor spoke. I can exchange ideas about these sculptures with my colleagues from Japan, Egypt or Romania. Even if these discourses end in mumbo-jumbo because of our verbal barriers – we understand each other through the form of the sculpture. It is a thoroughly uplifting feeling when I have completed a new sculpture after a several weeks symposium. I leave it behind in a country in the knowledge that I can return. And this return can actually feel like coming home.
Town of Rothesay
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