Reinhart Skoracki  

Purely Inspirational, intensely provocative and tremendously political are merely some of the words that can be used to describe the nature and character of Reinhard Skoracki’s sculptures.  Through his symbol-based imagery, Skoracki presents the complexities of human life in a politically and economically charged world.

 Born 1942 in the village of Hesepe in Germany, he quickly developed during his teen-years an interest in visual culture, which eventually led him to a prominent career in the advertising industry, in which he climbed his way up to Creative Director of a firm responsible for the advertising of Europe’s largest electronics company.  In 1988 Skoracki immigrated to Calgary and, four years later, enrolled at the Alberta College of Art and Design and the University of Calgary where he studied sculpture and printmaking.  He received his Diploma in Visual Arts in 1996, followed by a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts in 1997, both with distinction. 

 Since 1996, Skoracki has exhibited his works in several group and solo exhibitions in Canada, the United States, Japan, Holand, Czech Republic, Germany and Greece.  His works are held in numerous public and private collections in Canada and abroad.  The writer Nickolas Roukes describes Skoracki’s art as “admittedly caustic satire, but closer to Pantagruelism-the Rabelaisian philosophy of dealing with serious matters in a spirit of broad and somewhat cynical good humour”.  The “black Utopias” of Franz Kafka, Aldous Huxly, George Orwell, to name a few, have provided additional literary inspiration for Skoracki, and have built a fertile ground for symbiosis of art and literature in his visionary realizations.  Essentially, he wants viewers of his small scale sculptures to lean in, closely inspecting the pieces that he hopes sum up in eloquent fashion the essence of human existence.  In his expressive and philosophically challenging body of work, Skoracki feels an abiding sympathy for displaced, shunned members of society.  A dep humanism haunts his expressive, classical forms.  His sculptures and installations reflect la conditions humaine, in which fundamental questions about humankind are expressed as hand-to-hand combat between subject matter and artist.  In this, he tries to wrest that fundamental grain of truth, regardless of whether his truth bears a joyous or frightening countenance.