Thorben Wengler is a German artist working across painting, works on paper and sculpture. He developed an understanding of form and proportion that continues to inform his practice.
Wengler has been working with the figure from the beginning, not as something fixed or clearly defined, but as something that can shift, stretch and lose balance. Questions of dimension and proportion run through his work early on. Faces and bodies appear slightly off, compressed or enlarged, as if they follow their own internal rules rather than any anatomical logic.
In his paintings, this exploration first takes shape through the face. Rounded outlines and reduced forms hold the image together, while expressions remain difficult to read. Wengler keeps returning to the question of what expression actually gives us, whether it reveals something, or simply becomes a surface onto which we project.
His works on paper push this even further. Facial features blur, dissolve, almost disappear. These drawings resist the idea of portraiture as likeness. What remains is a trace, a sense of presence that feels fragile and unresolved.
Over the past year, Wengler has carried this line of thinking into sculpture. Working with materials such as bronze, stone and clay, he translates the forms of his paintings into three dimensions. The same disproportions and reductions reappear, now with weight and volume, what was once an image becomes a body in space.
Across painting, drawing and sculpture, Thorben Wengler creates works that continue the same questions through different materials. Browse available works by Thorben Wengler and explore his exhibition history.