Sculptor Martin Kargruber (b. 1965), from South Tyrol, Italy, forms each of his distinctive sculptural objects from a single piece of solid wood. He consciously uses the wood’s natural properties and organic materiality in his architectural and landscape motifs, employing traditional techniques and interpreting them anewin extraordinary ways. He transforms the rigidity of the material into a seemingly gentle movement, incorporating the workmanship itself into an explicit part of the design. His representative motifs are characterized—above and beyond the formal concept—by intensive exploration into the reality of the living world and a high level of poetic abstraction.