Daniel Wagenblast, born in Schwäbisch Gmünd in 1963, is a mas­ter craft­sman when it comes to working with wood. Since stu­dy­ing at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart, his the­me has been huma­ni­ty in rela­ti­on to the world – be it pis­tols, ani­mals, the glo­be, a car or a church, a tank, a house, a man or a woman. All the­se actors in Wagenblast’s sculp­tures tell sto­ries of shifts in sca­le and wond­rous rela­ti­onships bet­ween the world and peo­p­le and their things: humans as see­kers, wat­chers, drea­mers on the brink of the abyss, or heroes con­quering the world. A com­plex world, an enti­re cos­mos, is crea­ted with simp­le means. His figu­res are rather pro­to­ty­pi­cal and, not unu­sual­ly, based on the artist hims­elf. The deli­bera­te­ly rough sur­face takes away much of any illu­sio­ni­stic impres­si­on – it is the artist’s rea­li­ty that we encoun­ter in the works, which, at a distance from the rea­li­ty we per­cei­ve, imme­dia­te­ly beco­mes the truth.