Stella Hamberg is an exceptional figure in contemporary sculpture. Starting out from a reflected contemporary vocabulary of forms, her sculptures feature mainly human figures, but also animals, suffused with an elemental intensity that comprises self - asser tion and vitality as well as failure and death. The sculptress Stella Hamberg (b. 1975) usually opts for the classical material bronze which has traditionally combined durability with metamorphosis, if only in the amalgamation of different metals achieved through melting. Essential to the figures she creates are their existence in time and ability to transform, as well as eternity in the moment. Seeking to express the spiritual in the physical forms — from the overall pose down to the subtleties of sculptu ral detail and the surface shimmer — has been a concern of sculptors ever since antiquity. The reinterpretation of this grand tradition is one aspect of the topicality of her works.