About
Born in 1962 in Weil am Rhein.
I can still remember the walks I took with my father and the shopping trips with him to France and Switzerland.
Grew up in Horb am Neckar, influenced by the tradition of a family of sculptors with a focus on the religious.
After my father's early retirement, we returned to my parents' native village, where my father resumed his work as a sculptor. I spent a large part of my childhood between angels and statues of the Virgin Mary, wood, chisels and mallets. Ever since that time I have been able to recognize a type of wood by its smell and know the individual properties of a piece of wood.
In my youth, first experiences with photography, participation in competitions and first publications.
Later on I discovered photography. My brother gave me a Russian single-lens reflex camera as a present. I taught myself the necessary techniques, set up a small photo laboratory and took pictures like crazy.
Self-study of anatomy while working in hospitals, X-ray photography. It was during this time that I did paintings and sculptures.
Regardless of whether it was during my compulsory community service in a hospital near Munich or later on as a medical technologist in Berlin: Instead of a living room I had a studio in which I painted and created my sculptures. Of course the dark room was always part of this. My work in the medical field heightened my perception of human anatomy as well as of the human condition as such, something which becomes particularly apparent in a place where illness and death are to be found.
Spent time working in Italy and in the north of Norway, where I created a series of heads cast in stone and bronze.
How happy and lucky I was to be in these places in Europe: Italy, with its rolling hills, the midday heat, the sound of the cicadas singing, the lizards in the cracks of the walls, and the dry meadow behind the old farm house which almost went up in flames while I was molding heads. Then Norway – bright, day and night. Taciturn people. Huge rocks. Fjords in which you can catch fish just by using a string with a hook attached. It is here that I get carried away by the colors.
Subsequent to this further bronze sculptures in collaboration with the Noack Foundry in Berlin.
Not only was I able to chisel and patinate the bronze sculptures which were cast there together with the elder Noack, but when I was finished the figure was given the famous Noack seal, after being subjected to critical scrutiny, and half an hour later he had already sold a copy of the bronze sculpture to a customer.
Spent one year working at Lake Constance. Created my first wooden figures.
Suddenly it re-entered my life: wood. In an old barn with a view of the Upper Swabian cows and meadows filled with dandelions. I have brought my father's and grandfather's tools with me, but heavy equipment as well: a power saw and an angle grinder. Instead of the classic sculptor's wood, which is lime tree wood, I use types of wood which have their own intractable character for my figures. The result is a series of individual works and 'human space', a group of 50 wooden figures.
Focus on creating wooden sculptures in Berlin. Working in public spaces in Berlin and at Lago die Bolsena / Italy.
It can be beautiful somewhere else too. But Berlin is even more beautiful. I am working above a huge warehouse of a forwarding company in the eastern part of the city and in what used to be the central children's home during the 60s, not far from the center of Berlin.
Resumption of photography during a trip to Lake Baikal. Development of a photo printing procedure on wood plates …
It can actually be really beautiful somewhere else. In Buryatia for example. Lake Baikal, which is 25 million years old, is the oldest fresh-water lake in the world. A place which takes hold of me completely. I run around and look. And take pictures.
… and then on with the sculptures.
I decide to stick with wood. The figures change. I still want to depict the human condition in its entire diversity. The subject is unending.
Albrecht Klink lives and works in Berlin, Germany.