immanuel klein

Immanuel Klein was awarded the Brian Mercer Stone Residency 2009 at Studio Sem in Pietrasanta, Italy. During this three month period he learned how to enlarge a model into marble, following the method with the three compasses. Next to that, experiments with sandblasted marble resulted in two reliefs in bardiglio, a light-grey Italian marble. One of them is based on a conformation of fingerprints playing piano on the sand; the first four bars of Debussy’s ‘Claire de lune’. A final sandblast turned it into a velvet-like landscape, showing similarities with the volcanic ash landscape on La Palma.
“Since 2001 I’ve been working almost yearly in Pietrasanta but working at Studio Sem absolutely crowned it all. A marvellous experience made possible by the Brian Mercer Foundation.”
The language of shapes he uses in his recent work is based on sculptural phenomena he finds in nature: sand dunes in Namibia’s north-west, formed by wind, gravity and time, found on a virtual journey in Google Earth; a canyon in the north of Arizona, carved into massive sandstone; salt-lick blocks, eroded by the tongues of sable antelopes; granite rock formations at Brittany’s north coast near Ploumanach; temporary sand structures at sea during low tide.