Muchos tienen la cabeza gacha, una expresión melancólica o pensativa; la mirada perdida o los ojos cerrados. Además se sienten oprimidos o «paralizados» por elementos que, de una manera u otra, limitan sus movimientos: guantes de trabajo, una sierra, una cruz atada a la cintura, una estructura de celosías que llevan sobre la cabeza… Steiner sostenía que, hasta los seis años, los niños eran «místicos» Tras el misterio de esas tristes figuras infantiles están las teorías del filósofo austriaco Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), que otorgaba al ser humano hasta los seis años cualidades «místicas» y propuso opciones educativas alternativas de acuerdo con las capacidades extraordinarias de los niños para «sentir el inconsciente». Demetz se aferra a las ideas del pensador, que apostaba por centros educativos independientes del control gubernamental. El título de la muestra alude precisamente al poder imaginativo de la infancia y al poso que deja en la edad adulta. La nieve viene de la luna se refiere a las explicaciones fantásticas con que a veces los adultos satisfacen la curiosidad incansable de los niños. Según el autor italiano, más tarde, «en algunas fases de la vida se echan de menos» y se recuerdan con un cariño mayor que las científicas.
ENG: Gehard Demetz was formally trained in the tradition of religious sculpture in his hometown in the Dolomites a centuries old craft in the region. He eventually started making his own sculptures in his spare time informed by the iconography of his trade. His sculptures use children as the main subject to investigate contemporary culture and its destructive tendency through the larger forces of war, religion, and politics. One of the most startling technical features is the construction using small woodblocks and juxtaposing finely polished parts to very rough and sketchy surfaces. In an interview with Dazed Digitali, Demetz explains his choice to use children as subjects: “My sculptures transmit the awareness of becoming adults and thus losing, as Rudolf Steiner says, their ability to be able to “hear” their unconscious. They live with the burden of guilt transmitted from generation to generation, which does not belong to them. They are children who feel sad about not being able to really be children, but who have, on the other hand, the possibility of choosing to become adults, totally independently, thus freeing themselves little by little of all the influences transmitted by their ancestors. They are witness to all the effort involved in the process of growth and development, which is achieved through individual will and concentration.”
Demetz was born in Italy in 1972 and lives and works in Selva. He studied at the Institute of Art in Selva 1986 to 1989 and then went on at the same school to study sculpture.
