Bernhard Petz

Bernhard Petz,

born June 5, 1973, in Ehenbichl/Tyrol. After successfully completing his apprenticeship as a carpenter, he pursued music studies in Innsbruck and Cologne. From 1994 to 1996, he was a tuba player at the Staatstheater Stuttgart, and since 1997, he has been the principal tuba player of the Niederrheinische Symphoniker. Alongside his position with the Niederrheinische Symphoniker, Bernhard Petz passionately dedicates himself to his second calling: sculpture. Although hard Tyrolean granite from his homeland is his preferred material, he has also worked with marble, plaster, concrete, clay, and polyester. For instance, Petz designed and created four life-sized sculptures from polyester for the Städtischen Bühnen MG/KR, which served as stage sets for the journeys of Odysseus. Additionally, Petz often writes his own poems to accompany his works, attempting to counterbalance the tangible weight of the stones and their material dimension.

“Stones are mystical entities that have given shape and form to spirituality in ancient high cultures. In my language, I try to capture ‘timelessness.’ The carved pieces visualize spoken metaphors in a tangible dimension and freeze them in stone.”

In his sculptures, Bernhard Petz depicts the embraces and touches between two people. However, he does not limit himself to being a classical sculptor who represents these physical embraces in a concrete or abstract manner in stone.

His love for this theme is evident in his latest works, "Zwischenräume," where he seeks to manifest the contact surfaces of an embrace and make them tangible and visible as a sculpture. For this, the artist works directly with individuals who lie in an embracing position and have their contact surfaces cast. This imprint serves as a "template" or raw form, which is then developed into an independent sculpture, giving this intimate act a lasting space as an abstract figure.

This idea led Petz to explore the new medium of metal, and he has since delved deeply into bronze casting techniques. To this end, Petz studied and worked with the Tyrolean sculptor and bronze caster Prof. Johann Weinhard.

Since April 2010, he has been a member of the BBK Aachen.