What is the human body? Simply flesh and water, doomed to decay after death, or a flesh-and-water vessel for something ephemeral, for something intangible and invisible? This question has plagued human minds since the beginning of time, and both religion and art have attempted to answer this difficult issue. The representation of the human body almost disappeared from Modern sculpture; abstract and geometric forms have often merely feigned a reconciliation of this body/spirit dichotomy.

Pia Stadtbäumer, a young artist from Düsseldorf, has taken up this question with renewed vigor. In this, her