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artist creates sculpture

Artist creates ‘Transparent Man’ sculpture for public space in Germany

Tom Hoepf
Tom Hoepf
artist creates sculpture
Julian Voss-Andreae and his ‘Transparent Man,’ a stainless steel sculpture. Photo by Darren Newby, courtesy of the artist

FÜRTH, Germany (PRNewswire) – GS28 has announced the unveiling of internationally renowned artist Julian Voss-Andreae’s Transparent Man (Der Durchsichtige Mensch), the artist’s first public sculpture in his country of origin, Germany.

“I am very excited to share my work publicly in Germany, and especially in Fürth, a beautiful modern city with a rich cultural heritage reaching back over a thousand years,” said Voss-Andreae.

Commissioned by Jochen Schreier, the creator of the GS28 development, Transparent Man (Der Durchsichtige Mensch) is a 2.6-meter-tall figurative sculpture bust made from stainless steel. Created in a style directly inspired by Voss-Andreae’s background in quantum physics, the sculpture is made from thin, parallel sheets of steel that look solid from most angles but seems to fade away and almost disappear when viewed head-on as the light shines through the spaces between the slabs. Mounted on a large oval plinth doubling as a public bench, the sculpture is illuminated from within by computer-controlled color lighting, giving the work a striking presence during nighttime as well.

Schreier, who contacted the Voss-Andreae sculpture studio with his ideas about a public sculpture for GS28 in early 2019 said, “We are thrilled to have Voss-Andreae’s work for the first time on permanent public display in Germany. The Transparent Man is such a great fit with the goals and vision of what GS28 stands for; it is cutting edge and evocative on so many levels of our work in custom-personalized, biopharmaceutical medicine. It is exciting to see how contemporary art and technology, as two very different expressions of human culture, have evolved along converging paths.”

artist creates sculpture
Images of Julian Voss-Andreae’s sculpture under fabrication demonstrate the transparent effect when viewed directly from the front. Images courtesy of the artist

Julian Voss-Andreae, a German sculptor based in Portland, Oregon, is widely known for his striking large-scale public and private commissions often blending figurative sculpture with scientific insights into the nature of reality. His sculptures are frequently shown at international art fairs and galleries and can be found in major collections in North America, Asia, Europe, Africa and Australia, including a number of research institutes and universities such as the Scripps Research Institute (Florida), the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, California), the University of Queensland (Brisbane, Australia), Rutgers University (New Jersey) and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Voss-Andreae’s work has been featured in print and broadcast media worldwide and videos of his sculpture have received millions of views.

Prior to his art career, Julian Voss-Andreae studied quantum physics and philosophy at the Universities of Berlin and Edinburgh and did his graduate research participating in a seminal experiment in foundational quantum physics at one of the world’s most prestigious physics research labs at the University of Vienna. His expertise in diverse fields of science and a deep passion for the mysteries of quantum physics have been a continual source of inspiration for his work.

Link to Julian Voss-Andreae’s website: www.JulianVossAndreae.com