Thorben 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. What we recognize as mimicry or gesture doesn’t offer clear emotion. Instead, it feels held back. 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.

The 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. It feels less like a shift in direction and more like a natural next step, the same questions, continued through material.

In 2025, Wengler was presented at Enter Art Fair, Copenhagen and Affordable Art Fair, Hamburg.