Look at Me

Bruno Walpoth

Hailing from a family of wood sculptors, Bruno Walpoth simultaneously honors a centuries-old tradition and modernizes it for the 21st century. Walpoth carves life-sized human figures from blocks of wood, and finishes the sculptures with acrylic paint. He repeatedly covers and sands down the surfaces to mask evidence of the wood grain and achieve a translucent, skin-like appearance. Walpoth occasionally coats his sculptures with lead and has produced bronze works and drawn portraits, but he continuously finds himself drawn to wood due to its natural sensuality. Drawing inspiration from late Gothic and early Renaissance Italian wood sculpture, Walpoth emphasizes human sensibility over form. He chooses to capture a single moment rather than tell an entire story through each work.