25.September -30.Oktober 2024

Star Rocker marks the first presentation of Wolfgang Semmelrock’s new sculptural series incorporating gemstones, shown in the exclusive setting of The Natural Gem, housed within one of Vienna’s historic Ringstrasse palaces on Universitätsring.

Semmelrock’s fascination with gemstones reaches back to childhood. On the Turracher Höhe in Carinthia, stones were not yet objects of value or collection, but something almost primordial—objects to touch, inhabit and discover. As children, he and his family would even lie on cushions inside a genuine amethyst geode, surrounded by the crystalline interior of the stone.

Years later, during his time in Idar-Oberstein, one of Germany’s most important centres for gemstones and diamonds, this early fascination encountered a world in which stone, craftsmanship, value and transformation were deeply intertwined.

The new sculptural works emerge from this long-standing relationship with the mineral world. Rather than treating gemstones simply as precious materials, Semmelrock approaches them as carriers of presence, energy and perception—objects that seem to exist somewhere between sculpture, natural phenomenon and cosmic fragment.