Elmar Trenkwalder | Museum Beelden aan Zee | Beeldhouwkunst in Den Haag

Elmar Trenkwalder

15 October - 19 March 2023

Elmar Trenkwalder

Garden of Earthly Delights

The Austrian artist Elmar Trenkwalder (1959) evokes a baroque world in his sculptures and drawings, in which a mixture of eroticism and architecture takes place. Columns have phallic shapes and ornaments are made up of entwined human figures. The formal language and exuberance are related to the Baroque architecture, which flourished in Austria. Trenkwalder creates his own, sensuous variant of this, initially in drawings, but also in ceramics. His monumental ceramic sculptures, accompanied by drawings, are brought together in an exhibition in the Main Hall of the museum. The theme of the exhibition is Garden of Earthly Delights. The exhibition is arranged like a garden, the statues take the forms of architectural hedges, fountains and growing shapes reminiscent of branches and tree trunks. Central to the exhibition is an immense new sculpture, almost a garden in itself, a hortus conclusus, with a forest of ornaments, arches and botanical forms to wander in. The botanical aspects together with the erotic ornaments make the theme Garden of Earthly Delights more than opportune.