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ARON DEMETZ was born in Vipteno, South Tyrol, Italy in 1972 and now lives in Selva di Val Gardena, Bolzano. A woodcarver of incredible sensitivity, he has adopted and embraced the ancient South Tyrolean tradition of woodcarving with its roots in the 7th Century, thus enabling the deployment of these well-honed skills to create characters which are contemporaries to us in thoughts, colours and expressions. Art Historian Elisa Capitano notes, “The characters he carves out of wood evoke deep suggestions in the observer. Usually he represents young people that are visibly restless, but the anguish lies neither in their faces nor in their bodies and, in the same way as there is no verve of pain, there is no roughness that the wood itself as a material might imply either. All this creates a sort of alienation. The sculptures are all beings that are absorbed in the doubts of their own lives and they display a round plasticity composed busts and faces that show no tension. Some of these sculptures are in life-size, but their eyes go beyond us and, while on the one hand they are so similar to us, on the other they are so far away.” Demetz’s most recent works employ another ancient technique, silver gilding. This simple effective technique gives a dramatic and modern feel to his work creating a metallic, almost robotic entity.
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