Update: Dan Wollmering has been selected for a residency at the Rimbun Dahan Arts Centre (Malaysia) May - July 2009. Sponsors are Malay architecture firm Hijjas..

WINNER of the 2008 Contempora Sculpture Prize

Walking the fine line between abstraction and reality is a favorite pastime for artist and senior lecturer Dr Dan Wollmering. His large plywood sculptures, with their curvaceous forms, hint at a sense of instability, of voluminous balance. Working predominantly in either timber or bronze, these divergent media indicate the artist’s formalist intention to challenge materials to perform in contrast to their assumed character or properties. Thus a soft, curving mass produced using plywood suggests a malleability and airy lightness not normally assumed by timber.

‘The natural heft of wood is somehow undermined by a paradoxically buoyant quality here. With titles drawing explicit attention to their light, airy character Wollmering’s new work allows the viewer glimpses of the hollow interior. Through these various ploys and metaphors of organic growth Wollmering opposes modernist demands, allowing elements of lightness, play, and the natural world into the formalist arena,’
John Gregory, World Sculpture News, Volume 13, Number 2 Spring 2007, Asian Art Press (International)Ltd www.worldsculpturenews.net

While working within the field of abstraction, Wollmering’s sculptures allude to natural and larger universal designs. Interested in 3-D abstraction and notions of the ‘affected’, Wollmering investigates new ways to find meaning in historical and contemporary abstract sculptural forms. In his latest exhibition the artist is also concerned with abstraction as a means to engage our sense of the natural world and to assist us in understanding in a more profound, fundamental way notions of the worth of our environment.

Dan Wollmering has been exhibiting at Flinders Lane Gallery for 16 years. A senior lecturer in Sculpture at Monash University, Wollmering is widely regarded as one of Australia’s most important contemporary sculptors. Wollmering was one of 12 sculptors from 11 countries recently invited to participate in the Ninth Guilin Yuzi Paradise International Sculpture Symposium in China. The only sculptor invited from Australia, Wollmering’s sculpture Surge One is installed in Shanghai adjacent to the new Contemporary Art Museum/Gallery.

News Update: Dan Wollmering's sculpture proposal for the Beijing Olympic Park City Sculpture Design Competition has received a Nomination Award and will be exhibited in the Beijing Urban Planning Exhibition Hall with a forthcoming published catalogue as well. There were over 2,700 entries from 41 countries and only 262 Nomination Awards given.