Markus Stangl

Markus Stangl (*1962 Dachau, DE) loves to play with stability. Seeming on the verge of collapse, his sculptures test the limits of the media used - paper, stone and sand - and their load-bearing capacity. Air too finds use in his works, with the artist cramming inflated balloons between granite slabs arranged like toppled dominoes. A student of Eduardo Paolozzi (*1924 Leith, GB; †2005 London, GB) and James Reineking (*1937 Minot, US), Stangl has adopted a clear and reductive artistic style in line with the formal principles of minimal and concrete art. Tension finds expression in his works through an exploration of the boundaries of media and raw material combinations. But unlike fellow Paolozzi student Christian Hinz (*1964 Birkenfeld an der Nahe, DE), whose architectural sculptures are created by chipping away the excess from the chosen material to reveal and accentuate the sculpture that already exists within, Stangl imposes on the raw material a form that is at odds with its intrinsic character. The present work comprises six articulated stone blocks, all of a similar size, arranged into an upright three-quarter circle. And while it looks like the structure could topple at any minute, the precise alignment of its centre of gravity makes it perfectly stable, the first impression of instability nothing more than an illusion.