Future exhibition

Erwin Wortelkamp – Works on Paper

01.06.2025 – 17.08.2025

Erwin Wortelkamp has lived and worked in the Westerwald since the mid-1980s, where, in addition to his impressive oeuvre of sculptures, works on paper, texts on art and his own exhibition projects with artists, he has created an important landscape space in which he presents his artistic position. For him, it is often the inner and outer dialogues in harmony with nature that make up his artistic work and that seem more relevant today than ever. His sculptures in particular reflect structures related to nature, especially those based on trees – although it is often the title of the work that suggests this context (“Perhaps a tree,” is how he calls some of his works). His understanding of sculpture is based on the principle of dialogue. He often consciously acts as a public figure. He constantly asks new questions about the relationship between man and nature and the body and space. He primarily uses iron and wood to implement his ideas.

Wortelkamp has a multi-layered body of work, which is based on constant reflection on himself and on the potential effects of art. Less prominent are the numerous works on paper that he has created over the course of many decades, which range from sketches to projects and actions, to architectural designs and independent, free-form colored works. It is in these works that he explores the relationship between colour and surface, seeks out abstractly formulated echoes of nature and develops an independent body of work over the years. He experiments with the materiality of different papers as well as with the saturated colours of pastels or watercolours. The size varies and can take on human body dimensions. Last but not least, he uses the possibilities of woodcut or embossing.

The exhibition is specifically designed to explore this body of work. Fundamental sculptural themes such as fragility, stability, balance and calm are also of central importance. These relate just as excitingly to questions about the relationship between sculpture and architecture, sculpture and space and, ideally, also that between the work and its viewer.

Errwin Wortelkamp: Acquaviva 127/00, 2000, Leinöl, Terpentin, Pigment auf Papier, 100 x 96,5 cm, Foto: © Gunther Balzer, Kaiserslautern © Erwin Wortelkamp