Olaf Metzel

at Ein Harod

Skulptur in exzessiver Form

Olaf Metzel (born 1952 in Berlin, lives and works in Munich) is one of Germany’s most important contemporary sculptors. An essential element of his art is to provoke the viewer to think. Metzel’s diverse oeuvre includes large-scale sculptures in public space, small-scale sculptural think pieces, vigorous drawings, reliefs of bent tin with digital prints, and installative interventions. The new quality Metzel’s work introduces could be termed “performative sculpture.” The works not only establish a connection to the physical and architectural surroundings, but also to the social and urban space.

The present volume is published on the occasion of his first solo show at the Mishkan Museum of Art in Ein Harod (Israel). The new works, which have been developed especially for Samuel Bickels’s architecture, frame thematic references to Hannah Arendt and Susan Sontag and are augmented by major works by Metzel from the last several decades. Texts by Galia Bar Or, Hans Belting, Christoph Heinrich, Olaf Metzel, and Matthias Winzen.