David Nash

(U.K.) *1945 in Esher, Surrey

It would be hard to find another artist as committed to the natural material wood as David Nash in his multifaceted sculptural work. Even his bronze and cast iron sculptures are developed from working with wood. Nash is known around the world not least for his characteristic wood sculptures with partly or entirely charred surfaces. This year, in “Blickachsen 10”, three black patinated bronze works by the artist are on display, for which the wood models were also charred by a controlled flame, to give them a “new visual quality”. Even from close up, their surface structure and colour makes them seem as if they are made from charred wood – one has to touch them and knock on them to realize they are made of metal. Even with its title, “Black Butt” in the Bad Homburg Kurpark thematizes the roughly cut wooden ball that was its original raw material, while the smoothly worked “Three Humps” each display a gaping cut, making the artist’s creative intervention in nature patently clear. On the Ferdinandsplatz in Bad Homburg the majestic pair “King and Queen” consists of two towering abstract figures facing each other and forming a unit.