Caroline Ramersdorfer
Since then, she has participated in exhibitions worldwide and won commissions to create a number of large-scale, site-specific works at nearly two dozen international sculpture symposia.
Ramersdorfer’s early work consisted of “combinations of rusty steel and granite characterized by a terrestrial, heavy gravitation.” These were seen as “a metaphorical expression of contemporary life and existence...”[9] As an emerging artist, Ramersdorfer made several trips to Japan at the invitation of the Reimei no oka International Sculpture Symposium in Kyushu, and the International Sculpture Symposium, Mura-oka-Cho/Hyogo Ken, and with the help of a grant from the Austrian Ministry of Education and the Arts and Culture she was able to stay on.
"[12] In these sculptures, Ramersdorfer analyzes multiple square marble slabs then recomposes them to reveal complex interior spaces populated with carved out columns and ridges.
In her large-scale work, the viewer can enter the piece and experience the play of light, observing how this transforms a sculptural interior into a spiritual one.
“Light and the passage of time turn the delicate lattices into translucent assemblies that are constantly created anew, evoking a most varied range of emotions.
The crystalline nature of the material is transformed by shifting light into amorphous formations which appear to breathe, acquiring a life and vitality of their own.”[13] Symbolism is important in Ramersdorfer’s work, as evident in the Inner Views series.
[14] As the series progressed, Ramersdorfer began to see the inner carvings as representing an interior world both physical and spiritual, something she called an architecture of the soul.
"I see being a sculptor as an active process in creating a union and finding intersecting points between art, world cultures and their decisive human factor.
"[15] Seed of Unified Spirit, completed in 2008, took a global perspective, with seven marble slabs representing the different continents and poles, reflecting the Olympic park theme of “One World–One Dream.” Inner View Interlocked (2009), a commission from the Xinjiang International Urban Sculpture Symposium in Urumqi, China, to commemorate sixty years of the People‘s Republic of China, also embraced the idea of bridging cultures, ethnicities and human experience.
Other newer examples, like Inner View-Open 1 and Open Inner View, exhibited at the C. Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore, shatter their frames as chards of marble—like broken glass or melting ice—stick out like spikes.”[18] In 2012 Ramersdorfer was the subject of a documentary film, Caroline’s Rock, by Canadian filmmaker Jim Elderton.
