GERHARD RIBKA

Der Goldene Brunnen
Kiln cast glass
25cm x 14cm x 12cm


For my sculptural work, I use the lost wax process. I make the models mostly in wax, but sometimes in clay which is then cast via a silicone mould in wax. The models are handmade, often using Greek Terracotta figures or ancient Turkish figurative sculpture as inspiration or various starting points. Recently, I started to use found objects like dolls or parts of dolls which are also cast in wax using silicone moulds.

Once cast, the process of working on the cast surfaces of the glass is very important to me. This can involve a variety of ways of achieving different qualities: leaving some aspects of the refractory mould material on the glass, applying pigment or gold leaf, or wax, combining smooth and coarse areas of the glass achieved through the use of different firing temperatures, using opaque glass which is etched to a stone-like character. I sometimes combine glass with other materials like paper, papier-mache, metal or silicone.

Parallel to my sculptural work I work on written texts. For some of these, I use fairy tales, mainly their story line, as a catalyst or a guideline. For others, I use found photographs (just as I use photos of ancient sculptures as a starting point for my sculptural work). Then again I sometimes use a photograph of one of my sculptures as a starting point for a text. These texts are not descriptions of the images, nor are the sculptures illustrations of the texts. The visual and the literary merely feed each other in the very early stages of the creative process.

Biography pdf

Gerhard Ribka filler