Axel Anklam: Inside

A delicate-looking stainless steel net stretches across a winding round tube frame, reaching upwards. Lines intersect or drift apart, the surfaces appear tense and relaxed at the same time. They create a vague, almost directionless shape of utmost lightness. The translucent sculpture ‘Inside’ by sculptor Axel Anklam, who was born in Wriezen in 1971 and died in Berlin in 2022, is a complex geometry in space that translates harmonies and dissonances into a new formal language. Anklam observes art forms in nature – such as landscapes, mountain formations, wing beats, wind currents or musical sequences – and transforms them into abstract, synthetic structures. In his work ‘Inside’, the boundaries between form and space, which shines through the fine mesh, become blurred. The sculpture is an exploration of nature that does not imitate it, but rather reflects its innermost principles.

The work selected for Augustusburg comes from the artist's estate. Its hybrid form, reminiscent of a column of smoke, oscillates between mineral, animal, plant and human states. Located at the entrance to the Electress Anna Garden with its perennial plants and historic herb beds, the work refers to the work of the first German pharmacist, Electress Anna of Saxony. Throughout her life, she was intensively involved in agriculture, medicine and pharmacy. She had extensive knowledge, developed medicines, ointments and aquavits, as well as early laboratory and process techniques. In close contact with doctors, she also trained young girls in herbalism and cared for her fellow human beings with utmost devotion.

(Text: Alexander Ochs / Ulrike Pennewitz)