The cycle of life within Wolfgang Stiller’s “Matchstickman”
Since I started actively looking for new art and exploring all types of mediums I have been in love with a set of sculptures by German artist Wolfgang Stiller. While the artist still adds various sculptures to this series of works he began to create them about 10 years ago. I however didn’t discover them until about 2016 and still to this day will think about these profound works of art.
The name of this series is ‘Matchstickmen’ and it’s exactly what you would imagine, match sticks with human heads on the end. At the time Wolfgang was experimenting with various head molds which now play a huge part in his body of work. At the same time as these head molds, Stiller remembered he had some old bamboo wood lying around the studio from a movie shoot in china. One thing leads to another and the Matchstickmen was born.
We see these men standing upright with their blackheads burnt down the stick making them appear on the edge of snapping off. We see other ones with fresh redheads not yet to be lit. The matches represent ourselves, men and women who have worked to exhaustion until we are “burnt out” then laid down in our matchbox coffins.
You can visit the artist’s website here and follow him on Instagram here.
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All images © Wolfgang Stiller via his website.