Stefan Rinck Germany, b. 1973

Stefan Rinck’s primary medium is stone sculpture. His meticulously carved ensemble of figures emerges from an imaginative, otherworldly realm: anthropomorphic bears, immaculately dressed dogs, grinning alligators, contorted gargoyles, and other animated beings drawn from both contemporary imagery and historical traditions. Rinck constructs Bosch-like stone landscapes—tableaux of exuberance, menace, and biting humor—where references to popular culture intersect with Early Modern poetry and myth.

 

His sculptures recall the carved figures of Romanesque and Gothic architecture that animate church columns and tympana. Sharing a similar hybrid morphology, these chimeric and monstrous forms echo the grotesque vitality of medieval realism, once embodied in the carnivalesque processions of jesters and fools at religious and civic festivities. While medieval aesthetics permeate Rinck’s work, his conceptual framework aligns more closely with Romantic “Gothic” fixations: a fascination with mythology and folklore, the collision of disparate eras and cultures, and the allure of fantasy, excess, and hubris.

 

Stefan Rinck  studied Art History and Philosophy at the Universität des Saarlandes in Saarbrücken and Sculpture at the Academy of Arts in Karlsruhe. He has exhibited widely in galleries and museums, including Skarstedt Gallery (New York), De Hallen (Haarlem), Sorry We’re Closed (Brussels), Vilma Gold (London), Semiose (Paris), Patricia Low Contemporary (Gstaad and St. Moritz), Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle (Munich), The Breeder (Athens), Galería Alegría (Madrid), and Cruise & Callas (Berlin). Rinck has participated in major international exhibitions such as the Busan Biennale (South Korea) and Vent des Forêts (France), where he realized permanent public sculptures. His work is held in public collections including CBK Rotterdam, the Musée de la Loterie Belge, Sammlung Krohne, and FRAC Corse, among others.