Lucio Del Pezzo

“We only see what we look at”

by Maurice Merleau-Ponty

 

Peter Demetz was born in Bolzano in 1969 and from 1983 to 1984 he attended the Art Institute of Ortisei. After a period of apprenticeship at the Atelier of Master Heinrich Demetz, he finally obtained the Diploma of Master Sculptor. Subsequently, with the consensus of critics, he began to exhibit his works both in Italy and abroad such as in Austria, Germany, the United States, Belgium, Turkey and Iceland. From 1995 to 2002 he taught drawing, art history and sculpture at the Professional School of Ortisei and at the Professional School for Sculptors of Selva, obtaining famous awards such as the first prize in 2010 in Sulmona. His installations push themselves within the framework of everyday life, telling of simple gestures in a sort of game of mirrors that inevitably catapults the viewer into the world of the painting itself. Even though these are small works and without embellishments or enrichments, the hardness of the lime wood brings the singularity of life to life with a photographic gaze. The images reproduced are so authentic that one has the impression of not being authorized to the sensorial perception of those gestures which really seem to have been captured secretly.  It almost seems that Demetz wants to shape sociological groups, godstopoi which are captured from everyday contexts and returned to the eye of the observer. The author creates a theatrical atmosphere, in which it seems that individuals are aware of being observed and in which the space is entirely turned towards the observer.