Axel Anklam – Lichtwanderer

This first institutional exhibition of works by the sculptor Axel Anklam after his death includes representative works from different phases of his main creative period, from 2005 to 2021.

Axel Anklam (1971 – 2022) is a sculptor known for his abstract, organically shaped, light-flooded sculptures. In his works, he combines classic and contemporary materials – hard materials such as stainless steel and innovative materials such as glass fibre-reinforced plastic, epoxy resin and carbon. With his profound knowledge of static and musical-rhythmic laws Anklam combines weightlessness, transparency and mass in his sculptures in a fascinating way. The translucent sculptures are based on impressions of landscapes, in particular mountain worlds and the dynamics of winds. He expanded his artistic repertoire to include titanium-coated reliefs, which create an interplay of light and shadow in gold or black. The reflective surfaces create a three-dimensional space that encourages reflection on the self, life and the interactions between light, form and nature. These ideas also characterise his art-in-building projects realised with Thomas Henninger, such as Solaris at the TU Bergakademie Freiberg or Music at the Berlin-Spandau music school.

Axel Anklam (* 1971 in Wriezen, † 2022 in Berlin) trained as a blacksmith from 1987 to 1990 and became a master blacksmith in 1993. From 1998 to 2001, he studied sculpture at Burg Giebichenstein in Halle and continued his studies from 2002 to 2006 at the Berlin University of the Arts, where he was a master student of Tony Cragg and received the President's Master Student Award. In 2003 he won the main prize in the sculpture competition for the Neue Berolina (Hausvogteiplatz, Berlin). In 2010 he received the Ernst Rietschel Art Prize for Sculpture and the Gerlinde Beck Prize for Sculpture and was appointed guest professor at the Stuttgart State Academy of Fine Arts. In 2017, he was honoured with the Berlin Art Prize in the Fine Arts category of the Academy of Arts.