Andreas Blank
Untitled
2019, Marble, 25 × 25 × 110 cm
Planes
2021, Marble, Quartz, 47 × 27 × 85 cm
About the works
In his sculptural practice, Andreas Blank combines the abstract and the realistic, the conceptual as well as the technical. He sources stones from quarries from all over the world, carves them with elaborate deliberation and assembles them as sometimes consciously stylized, and other times deceptively realistic objects of the everyday. In his precise installations, the apparently ephemeral objects achieve monumental permanence. Whether marble, alabaster, or porphyry, material historically used to serve religious or political functions, has in Blank's hands acquired a seemingly casual and fragmentary character. The geographical and cultural identity of the stone and the memorial function of stone-sculpture in general refer to the value of each object. Blank questions the obvious and transforms traditional ideals, subverting the value of the ordinary and mundane. In a discourse of image and likeness, things lose their functional purpose, transcending into pure, formalistic objects. Stone sculptures, which historically were intended primarily for political representation or religious devotion, in Andreas Blank’s works come to question a (post)modernist nihilism. His works succeed to condense time and narrative structures, stretching the limits of traditional sculpture.
Bio
Andreas Blank was born in Ansbach (Germany) in 1976. He attended the Karlsruhe State Academy of Art (Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste) and was student of Prof. Harald Klingelhöller. He held a scholarship with the German National Academic Foundation and received his Master of Fine Art from the Royal College of Art in London. In 2009 he was a finalist for the New Sensations Award by Channel 4 and the Saatchi Gallery. Blank lives and works in Berlin.