ArtMetal / Hephaistos

A Physician and the Love of Steel

 

page 3

 

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The theme "German Mythology and Wagnerian Music" came up first at an exhibition of Claussen's at Bad Urach in 1987. At the invitation of the organizers of this music festival, he presented an exhibit of steel sculptures -- a preview of his acclaimed success in Bayreuth in 1992, "Gestalten, Götter, Gesichter aus Stahl" [Structures, Gods and Faces in Steel]. The Bayreuth exhibition showed the public a new Claussen, one that doesn't shy from monumental scale, who found inspiration for powerful expression in the larger-than-life -- German gods and heroes.

Here, too, Claussen draws together past and present, science and art. Now he knows how to paint his work in a way that the simplicity of his form can suggest symbols of primitive antecedents. The effect is to give the viewer a sense of an archaic encounter, say as of ethnic masks or of ancient cuneiform tablets. He describes the trend of his own work as "narrative sensationism". [? sensory-ism? Sensologismus -tr] To the company of archetypes and visages of German and Nordic mythology -- Siegfried and Lohengrin, dark Hagen of Tronje or the god Wotan and the fate-weaver Norns -- there now comes a green plant:

 

last refreshed Sat, Oct 4, 1997

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