Ottmar Hörl:
Sculpture "Sponti Dwarf", gold-plated version
Ottmar Hörl:
Sculpture "Sponti Dwarf", gold-plated version

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ars mundi Exclusive Edition | limited, 199 copies | numbered | signed | cast metal gold-plated | size 7 x 15 x 5 cm (w/h/d) | weight 1.3 kg

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Product no. IN-776810

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Sculpture "Sponti Dwarf", gold-plated version
Ottmar Hörl: Sculpture "Sponti Dwarf", gold-plated version

Detailed description

Sculpture "Sponti Dwarf", gold-plated version

Dwarfs enjoy his special affection. They have brought the conceptual and action artist Ottmar Hörl cross-border attention and recognition. With his spectacular large-scale installations in public spaces, the professor and former president of the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg pursues the goal of forcing dialogue and debate on the field of tension between art and nature.

In 1994, for example, on the occasion of his installation "Rolling Change" in Seligenstadt, he had set up one thousand blue "Sponti gnomes" - also known as garden gnomes flipping off - individually and in group formations in the town and they were then left to themselves, and they remained until someone took them away. This effect of the total gnome population slowly disappearing was deliberately intended and desired, it was one of the goals of the overall project. For Ottmar Hörl, this was not a change of ownership, but the completion of a change from public to private space, a change of position entirely in the sense of a "rolling change". By the way, modern times cannot boast of having created the gesture of flipping someone off. It was already known in ancient Rome.

ars mundi has released the "Sponti Dwarf" as a numbered and signed Exclusive Edition of 199 copies each. Three variants in cast metal, optionally gold-plated (24-carat), silver-plated or bronzed. Size 7 x 15 x 5 cm (w/h/d) each.

"Sponti Dwarf", gold-plated version. Weight approx. 1.1 kg.

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Portrait of the artist Ottmar Hörl

About Ottmar Hörl

Ottmar Hörl (born 1950) is one of the most important contemporary German artists.

His sculptural work deals with the theme of standardisation and the equalisation of everyday objects that surround us in so many ways in our lives. But he does it in an extremely humorous way, and his "exhibitions" resemble magnificent spectacles when, for example, he "carries" a giant swarm of owls to Athens, sets up hundreds of bears in front of the Brandenburg Gate or displays 1,000 meerkats on a "staff outing" - all made of brightly coloured plastic.

"Concentrated in a square or distributed in the urban space, my installations become visual as well as tangible obstacles. They are meant to trigger reflection, a moment of pause."

His most famous action was dedicated to the artist Dürer and his world-famous watercolour of a hare. In 2003, no more and no less than 7,000 rabbits filled the main market square in Nuremberg for the "Great Rabbit Piece".

From 1975 to 1979 Ottmar Hörl studied at the Städelschule Academy of Fine Arts in Frankfurt am Main, and from 1981 at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts as a student of Klaus Rinke. In 1985 he founded the group "Formalhaut" with the architects Gabriela Seifert and Götz G. Stöckmann. In the early 1990s, Hörl was a visiting professor at the Graz University of Technology. Since 1999 he has held a professorship for fine arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg, and between October 2005 and October 2017 he was president of the academy.

Through his works, Hörl is engaged with the aesthetics of everyday culture. He defines the term as an "organisational principle" and detects this principle in his environment, in which many objects of daily use are standardised and normed.

His works can be found in many national and international collections. Ottmar Hörl lives and works in Nuremberg and Wertheim.

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