Wood, the aroma of it is ubiquitous. You smell it, see it and can feel it; you can even taste it in the air, for every surface is covered with shavings.
Upon entering the atelier, there is no mistaking; Max Jungblut is an artisan. Yet, his craftsmanship extends far beyond the creation of mere commodities. Indeed, it appears that Jungblut is driven by the idea of wresting processed wood free of it is commodity status and bring it back together to reach a more natural state. Especially his current work lets us discover the smooth, sometimes chaotic and yet always organic forms, predominant in nature. Jungblut creates a space for his materials to become artifacts not of human made perfection. Strikingly the imperfections and the unevenness of the artifacts display a form of natural perfection.aj_about_001
All pieces by Atelier Jungblut breathe the same love for nature. It is the stark contrast between industrialized wood and the natural forms which should be understood as the red line we can follow throughout Jungblut’s work. Technologized forms, modern and minimalistic in their appearance are brought back in nature’s sinuous lines. While every artifact presents itself in a light wooden brown, the spectator experiences a revelation when closer examining the actual flow and diversity of color each artifact has to offer. Here again, the artist lets nature to speak for itself as the colors and shades which evolve are not intentionally structured nor ordered but are a result of the arbitrary setting of the material in use.
Many of the artifacts we can observe may still be understood in an actual use context. At the same time, the dichotomy between sculpture and means of everyday usage and that of conceptual and pragmatic is not far from the observer’s sensation. Jungblut continuously discovers new forms in these sculptures and by remarkably straightforward configurations allows the observer to follow his thought process. A table which might have served as mere means for human consumption is now brought back into the smooth gentle shape of nature, turned upside down and thus becomes a sculpture alienated from its former context.