Stacked Squares

source: hollistaggart

(B. 1958)

Martin Willing was born in 1958 in Bocholt, Germany. Along with his two older siblings, Willing grew up in his family’s store, a bicycle shop where his father welded his own frames and molded his own tires. During the summers, the family would take trips throughout the German countryside on a tandem bicycle, during which his parents would explain the various towns’ cultural and architectural history; Willing still believes these trips, and the skills he observed in his father’s shop, are integral to his current art-making process. There was no true artistic activity in his family, however; his first encounter with art was at school, where his interest and talent was fostered by his teacher and local artist, Manes Schlatt. By age eleven, Willing was working with linocuts and woodcuts. To supplement his learning at school, Willing borrowed numerous art books from the local library, from which he copied paintings to further his drawing skills. By the end of his early education, Willing began to transfer these drawings into the third dimension in small clay and artificial stone sculptures.

Willing continued his artistic training at the Münster Art Academy where, interestingly, he also studied Physics. His devotion to art was solidified, however, while he prepared his first major exhibitions at the Josef-Haubrich-Kunsthalle in Cologne and the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein in Berlin. This interest and knowledge of science remain in his work; the concepts and theories his learned through these studies provide the base for much of his artistic process. His earliest works very much reflected the experimental methods of physics, exploring materials, kinetic movement, and other similar properties that often resulted in works of long, thin wires and rods that stretched out into the space around them. Most recently, Willing uses specialist technologies such as the high-powered water jet or laser cutters, to create more refined and complex works that ultimately split into two categories, “kinetic” and “concrete” art. Willing continues to create new and dynamic sculptures, and is ever evolving and redefining his processes to create what has become a highly diverse and technically rigorous body of work.
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source: galerie-benderde

Martin Willing wurde 1958 in Bocholt geboren. Er lebt und arbeitet in Köln.

Durch die besondere Kombination seines Kunststudiums mit dem der Physik entwickelt Martin Willing die Fähigkeit, seinen Metallskulpturen durch das ihnen innewohnende Schwingungsvermögen, eine unvermutete Leichtigkeit zu geben. Die Beweglichkeit seiner Skulpturen entsteht nicht durch Scharniere und Gelenke, sondern durch Schwingung in der Tiefe des Materials.

Mit Hilfe der von ihm erstmals in der Metallbildhauerei angewandten Technik des Vorspannens kann Martin Willing Skulpturen scheinbar schwerelos in den Raum „spannen“. In Experimenten untersucht er die Schwingungseigenschaften einer geometrischen Struktur, indem er ihre Ausdehnung im Raum, die Verteilung ihrer Massen und ihre Orientierung zum Schwerefeld der Erde immer wieder verändert, bis er eine spezifische und langsame Schwingung findet, in welcher Bewegung und angestrebte Form eine Einheit bilden. Der Betrachter selbst initiiert durch achtsames Anstoßen die Bewegung seiner Kunstwerke. Eine Dramaturgie der Bewegung lässt ihn die Werke vom Ruhezustand bis hin zu kalkuliertem Chaos und beim Zurückschwingen in die geometrische Form erleben.

Martin Willing was born in 1958 in Bocholt, Germany. He lives and works in Cologne, Germany.

Having studied both art and physics, Martin Willing uses the inherent ability of metal to oscillate, which gives his sculpture an unexpected lightness. The flexibility of his work is not created by hinges and joints but by oscillation deep in the material.

With the technique of prestressing, used for the first time in metal sculpture, Martin Willing is able to “span” his work into the surrounding space, rendering it seemingly weightless. In experiments he investigates the oscillating features of a geometric structure by continually changing its extension in space, the distribution of its mass and orientation to gravity until he finds a specific and slow oscillation in which the movement and desired form create a unity. The viewer himself initiates the movement of his art works through cautious contact. In his sculpture the dramaturgy of movement can be experienced from the resting state to calculated chaos and the return oscillation into the geometric form.