Hermann Josef Runggaldier

∗1948, Italy
lives and works in Val Gardena, Italy

Hermann Josef Runggaldier (*1948, Val Gardena) is a sculptor who works mainly with wood found in the natural environment. He goes in search of the past life of objects and makes them precious: by applying gold leaf to tree bark gnawed away by beetles, for example, or by transforming tree rings into abstract visual elements. He gathers pieces of wood showing traces of life, such as true wood architectures created by the smallest creatures of the forest, e.g. ants or bark beetles, underneath the surface of tree trunks. These natural objets trouvés he raises to a monumental level by multiplying their dimensions and placing his larger-than-life objects on pedestals, so that the normally invisible and unknown treasures become visible to the world. Through the monumentalisation he transforms the objects into an imaginary language full of associations, and through the meticulous treatment of the surfaces and their patina he makes the objects even more precious. For the Biennale Gherdëina 7, Runggaldier has created a larger-than-life and at the same time delicate sculpture of an ant architecture which, thanks to its positioning outdoors, namely in front of the presbytery of St. Antonius church, which faces east, becomes an intimate symbol for the meeting of two worlds.

At the exhibition room of the Sala Trenker the artist presents a tree trunk, worked on by bark beetles, whose secret hieroglyphs he highlighted in gold in order to lift these delicate graphic symbols, created by nature and normally unnoticed, like archaeological traces from the past back into the present.