Even as a child, Leiko Ikemura knew that she would forge her own path and give it her all. The artist was born in Tsu, Mie Prefecture, Japan, and now lives in Berlin. “A sculpture is not just an object, but also the atmosphere that surrounds it,” she says. Nature, she explains, is a force of symbiosis. Material and form are inextricably linked anyway. “One determines the other, and material is enduring when it allows for transformation.” Incidentally, she perceives emptiness as equally powerful: “Perhaps we aren’t even aware of it, but absent forms are transcendence, a sacred nothingness.” At night, when Leiko Ikemura sleeps, she embarks on magnificent journeys.

Jaume Plensa’s large-scale sculptures can be found in public spaces in Madrid, Seoul, and his hometown of Barcelona, among other places. In Upper Bavaria, his sculpture “Yolandita” enters into a relationship with a setting that exists far removed from the big city: “In this place, the eternal dialogue between art and nature is clearly evident. The works are enriched by their surroundings and find their fulfillment among the trees and flowers of the garden,” he says. A state that, according to Plensa, an artist can at best approach: “Paul Valéry said that a poem is never finished; it is merely abandoned. That is a very apt way to express what is perhaps the most difficult moment of creation: letting go of the artwork!”

Disorder, indeterminacy, and unpredictability – these concepts underlie Bernar Venet’s sculptures made of reddish-orange Corten steel. The French sculptor studied in Nice and still lives in Provence today. “A work of art,” he says, “has its own identity; it embodies an autonomous aesthetic and theoretical content. Its true significance lies above all in the ideas it evokes and in the new perspectives it opens up for our understanding of art.” For him, it’s all about creativity: “the ability to develop new solutions, transcend existing boundaries, and conceive of a previously unknown view of the world.”

“When we talk about things and objects that exist in the world as they are, sculptures are an absolute rarity,” says Anthony Cragg, “they are original, crazy new forms offered to humanity. A new form means new emotions, new ideas, and new freedoms that are made possible.” The German-British artist began exploring techniques such as drawing and bronze and wood sculpture in the 1980s. At the same time, he was already teaching at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. “I’m not a sculptor who depicts something that already exists,” he says. Rather, he is interested in how forms are actually constructed. In 1988, Cragg was awarded the prestigious Turner Prize.