Hard as marble and soft to the touch – Munich

For three months it has been standing at the Stachus, directly in front of the Palace of Justice: the “Autoeater”. A large maw of white marble swallowing a Fiat Panda. Only the front part is sticking out. Will the motorists rushing past be irritated by this? Do they even notice it, those Munich residents who prefer to move in the fast lane? In any case, pedestrians and cyclists often stop and wonder who put the object there.

Its creators, the Munich sculptors Julia Venske and Gregor Spänle, associate an obvious message with their “Autoeater”: “It symbolizes the end of an era,” says Julia Venske, “and it is intended to promote the car-free city.” He’s in the right place at Munich’s Stachus. After all, there are already visions of a kind of central park on Sonnenstrasse, with trees instead of traffic jams and wide cycle paths instead of parking lanes.

The “Autoeater” made of Carrara marble will stand in front of the Palace of Justice at Stachus until May. He weighs 16 tons.

(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)

The gorge including the car weighs 16 tons. The marble comes from Carrara. Before the sculpture came to Munich, it was in Atlanta, USA. “There, too, a rethink is taking place,” says Gregor Spänle. The megacity in Georgia wants to become greener and more sustainable, promoting cycle paths and public transport.

Julia Venske and Gregor Spänle have been working together for more than 25 years, always with marble. The Carrara stone with its fine grain was an exception, it was donated to them by a company. Otherwise they only use the flawless white marble from the Lasa valley in South Tyrol. The two met in the sculpture school there, he from Munich, she from Berlin, in 1991. With the diploma in their pocket, they then drove to India, worked there in various marble quarries, and when the visa expired, “we didn’t want to go home yet,” says Julia Venske. They loaded the trunk full of marble, shipped the car to Australia and flew after it.

“When we arrived in Melbourne, we were standing in front of the University’s Sculpture Department,” says Venske. They spontaneously asked if they could work on the stone they had brought with them. “The professor in charge must have found our enthusiasm very funny.” They met the sculptor Robert Owen, who encouraged them and said: keep it up, work together. They then had their first exhibition in Sydney.

Sculpture art: Julia Venske and Gregor Spänle have their workshop in the creative district on Dachauer Straße, in Hall 6.

Julia Venske and Gregor Spänle have their workshop in the creative district on Dachauer Straße, in Hall 6.

(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)

Her formal language was playful and ironic right from the start. They began grinding the marble into flowing little objects, “at first it looked like drops of milk on a hot stovetop,” says Venske. Then the drops wrinkled. And suddenly each of these amorphous objects had a character. The two call their cheerful stone creatures “Smorfs”. The artist couple estimates that there must be around 300 to date, and they have now spread to all continents.

Venske and Spänle are represented by three galleries, in New York, where the couple lived and worked for 15 years, in Valencia and in Hanover. And again and again the sculptors themselves bring their Smorfs to distant countries. “Once we dumped one on the road to Dakar,” says Venske, “with the request to take it to the Biennale there.” They know nothing of his whereabouts.

It didn’t stay with the Smörfs. The sculptures grew taller, they began to devour objects. Prohibition signs, plastic waste, sculptors’ tools. In Seoul, a snail-like sculpture sucked away a street lamp. In California, a giant worm ate a prohibition sign on the beach, “almost everything is forbidden there, eating, staying overnight, alcohol, music, dogs,” says Gregor Spänle. Their works are striking, the two have remained rebels at heart. Rebels who, as they say, can make a good living from their art.

The giant worm is currently in the creative district on Dachauer Strasse. Venske and Spänle rented two containers there. One serves as a workshop, the other, with large windows, as a showroom. A large number of crazy amorphous stone creatures cavort there, which appear playful, organic, almost alive. In any case, they make the viewer smile. You want to touch them, caress the incredibly smooth stone.

Sculpture art: The flawless white marble comes from South Tyrol.  It is not easy to work with and transparent like skin.

The flawless white marble comes from South Tyrol. It is not easy to work with and transparent like skin.

(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)

Lasa marble is snow-white and “as transparent as skin,” says Julia Venske. It’s not easy to work with, “if you’re not careful, it crumbles under your fingers,” adds Gregor Spänle. That’s why only the rough grinding is done with the machine, the further processing is done by hand. So finally the hard stone feels almost soft.

Sometimes they work together, sometimes separately, and since they regularly have exhibitions in different countries, there is always a lot to organize. Now they would like to leave their Autoeater at the Stachus for a longer period of time. The city of Munich financed the campaign, the approval only runs until the end of May. The panda, says Gregor Spänle, is actually another symbol: for a practical, economical, unpretentious car. Little material, low fuel consumption. Spänle drove one himself at the age of 18, when he just got his driver’s license. “You could even sleep in there as a couple.” It awakened feelings of youth to work on such a car. That he had to cut it up so that it would fit into the marble abyss “that hurt my soul”.

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