Veit Korn

In Echoes of Egypt, archaic formal language merges with contemporary reflection to create a powerful symbol of human estrangement. The head, partially embedded in stone and marked by oxidation, evokes not only ancient sarcophagi but also the haunting fragility found in the work of Alberto Giacometti – especially his framed spaces of solitude, absence, and existential weight.

The face appears lost, eroded, half-swallowed by time. The open mouth suggests a silent cry, an unheard lament. It is the image of a being suspended between dissolution and endurance – a sculptural rendering of an existential boundary state.

Korn’s work speaks in the language of existentialism: raw materiality, containment, and the marks of time evoke key themes such as solitude, anxiety, freedom, and the relentless search for meaning. Just as central is the notion of transience – not only in the physical erosion of the surface, but in the sense that all things human – memory, identity, significance – are subject to erasure. The figure, thrown into the world, caught between awareness and futility, becomes a sculptural metaphor for our shared condition. What remains is a gaze from the depths: unflinching, not empty – a presence aware of itself, and suffering because of it.

The sculpture reads like an archaeological find from an imaginary past or a distant future. It invites reflection not only on ancient Egypt, but on human memory, mortality, decay, and our yearning for meaning in an indifferent cosmos.