BIOMORPHIC WORLDS

Exhibition with sculptures and small sculptures as well as drawings, etchings, linocuts and woodcuts by Henning Bock

Artistic transformations

Since 2019, Henning Bock has regularly visited the mammal collections of Museum Koenig to make graphic studies and sculptural sketches of vertebrae and skulls. In his studio and sculpture workshop, these are further processed into ink drawings, prints and stone sculptures. His observations of biomorphic forms and shapes on the original specimen form the basis of his artistic transformations and improvisations. "Bones, especially skulls, have inherently plastic-sculptural qualities and a fascinating structural power: a hard formal tension, fine transitions from one partial form to the other and a great variety in the partial volumes." (H. Bock) In the creative process, the two- and three-dimensional means of pictorial design influence and interpenetrate each other, opening up new pictorial spaces between objective conditions and subjective interpretation of organic structures.

The value of scientific collections

Zoological collections document natural communities in space and time. They are the basis for understanding and protecting our natural world. Each newly described species is documented by a selected individual of that species. This particularly valuable holotype is unique and will serve as a reference specimen in the future. Geographical series of each species document the gradual or abrupt transitions from one species to another; correspondingly temporal series, which make the changes in species communities at a location comprehensible. The collections also document the extent of biological variations, for example in colour or geographical differences in size.

It is not uncommon for new species to be discovered later in the collections themselves, when more detailed analyses of shape or genetics reveal corresponding differences. Due to the man-made extinction of species, zoological collections are ultimately the last evidence of a species. In nature, however, they remain extinct forever.