Arijel Štrukelj

Arijel Štrukelj is a Slovenian sculptor, born in 1987 in Slovenia. Since 2022 he has been a member of the artists’ association Sculpture Nomad.

He works chiefly with stone (granite, trachyte, marble) and also with wood, bronze and metal; at Art in the City he used metal pipes. He works in long-running cycles — “Tension of Life”, “Soul Impact” and “Knot of Humanity” — in which he deals with the transience of life, with the fragility and the strength of the human soul and with our estrangement from nature and from our own roots.

He has taken part in more than thirty international sculpture symposia around the world: Slovenia (Forma Viva Makole, Forma Viva Portorož, Forma Viva Logarska dolina, Negovan Nemec Bilje, MMM art Goriška Brda), Italy, Switzerland (Frauenfeld, Steinmaur, Büren an der Aare, Pfäffikon), Austria (Werfenweng, Grünbach am Schneeberg), Germany (Steinleicht/Krabatstein), France (La Bresse), Portugal (SIAC Guarda), Denmark (Sønderborg), Romania (Craiova), Iran (Tehran, Tabriz), Saudi Arabia (Riyadh), Azerbaijan (Baku), Egypt (Hurghada), Burkina Faso (Laongo), Argentina (Bienal de Chaco, El Impenetrable), Chile (Santiago) and Taiwan. He has himself organised three sculpture symposia in Slovenia.

Exhibitions (selection): a solo exhibition in Vienna (2019); Gallery Jedlitschka, Zurich (2022); Skulpturenpark Steinmaur, Switzerland (2019–2022); City Gallery Biel, Switzerland (2021–2022); DLUM Gallery, Maribor (2022); Lokarjeva galerija, Ajdovščina (2022); Galerija Lendava (2020); the international exhibition “Stone Mambo”, Hualien, Taiwan (2020); the 4th and 5th Silk Road International Art Exhibition, Xi’an, China (2018, 2019); Museo del Arte sul Mare, San Benedetto del Tronto, Italy (2020); the 12th Bienal de Chaco, Resistencia, Argentina (2022).

Awards: 1st prize at the international symposium Forma Viva Makole, Slovenia (2016); 1st prize, Primavera Young Artist Award, DLUM Gallery, Maribor (2022); 1st prize Palacios Hermanos, Bienal de Chaco, Resistencia, Argentina (2022); several prizes in the DOSS Sežana competition.

At the Art in the City festival he showed the work “Industry standard RECONNECT” in 2025 (metal pipes, Sokolský ostrov, České Budějovice).