Elmar Trenkwalder

The Austrian artist Elmar Trenkwalder (1959) evokes a baroque world in his sculptures and drawings, where a blend of eroticism and architecture takes place. Columns have phallic shapes, and ornaments are composed of intertwined human figures. The visual language and exuberance are related to the baroque architecture that flourished greatly in Austria. Trenkwalder creates his own sensual variant of this, initially in drawings, but soon also in ceramics. His monumental ceramic sculptures, accompanied by drawings, are brought together in an exhibition in the Great Hall of the museum. The theme of the exhibition is Garden of Earthly Delights.

The exhibition is arranged like a garden, with the sculptures taking 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 through. The botanical aspects combined with the erotic ornaments make the theme Garden of Earthly Delights more than appropriate.