In just 3 days, Gerhard broke the previous record from 2003 for the World’s Largest Chocolate Santa – without help! The German television station PRO7 accompanied the project for their show Galileo, and the camera teams filmed everything, making sure that Gerhard’s work was his alone and no pre-made parts were used.
Gerhard′s exhibition „ilovechocolate.at“ in the historic City Hall took center stage at the First Paderborner Chocolate Festival. More than 22,000 visitors stormed through the exhibition in three days, leaving Gerhard to catch his breath between guided tours.
21 remarkable chocolate sculptures were presented during the exhibition making it the world’s largest single-artist chocolate art exhibition.
Gerhard produced this life-size sculpture of a woman trying to achieve a yoga position exclusively for the Choco Vienna 2007 event. 130 kg of chocolate were crafted in 120 working hours into an impressive, one-of-a-kind sculpture. As part of Vienna’s 8th annual “Lange Nacht der Museen” (an open house gala of the city’s museums), Gerhard worked on the sculpture live on location at the Palais Niederösterreich.
German television station PRO7 presented Gerhard with an exciting challenge when they requested that he carve a life-size woman from a massive block of chocolate within 48 hours – in front of rolling cameras. The producers asked – is it doable? Gerhard took the challenge on and got to work …
In mid-May 2006, Gerhard received an unusual request: Andrea Knobloch, an artist in Düsseldorf, Germany, contacted him saying she needed a Pastry Chef to create a giant eagle out of sugar for an exhibition she was planning. Pastry Chefs she had contacted in Germany and Switzerland claimed it couldn’t be done. Gerhard’s extensive experience in creating sugar sculptures gave him a clear advantage, and he was confident that he could find a solution to this challenge of gravity…
A bronze statue is standing on the floor. 85 kilograms of chocolate are applied to the sculpture and formed into the shape of a body builder. When the chocolate sculpture is finished, the chocolate is melted away, revealing the bronze statue. The chocolate, therefore, serves as a human shell that disconnects from its inner self through time, and eventually falls away.
My final presentation was given in Spanish, English and German, in order to emphasize and do justice to the multicultural togetherness of our time.
The Austrian Alps provided a dramatic natural backdrop for the 8th International Culinary Art Exhibition in Warth in Lower Austria. Chefs and artists from several different countries met to show their expertise in various culinary disciplines.
November 10-15, 2004. “Sweetsculptures.at by Gerhard Petzl” was the only European exhibitor at the 7th Annual Chocolate Show in New York City, a three-day festival devoted entirely to the sweet, sensuous, creamy world of chocolate. The show surprised and delighted 30,000 chocolate lovers of all ages with chocolate tastings, leading chocolate makers and the world’s best in chocolate artistry.
“Temporal Art”, a project organized by the Künstlerhaus (“Artists’ House”) in Graz, Austria, becomes the platform for Gerhard’s many-dimensioned artwork telling the story of humankind’s interconnectedness.
The project: Gerhard was part of a select group of Styria’s premier artists chosen to take part in this one-of-a-kind competitive project. Each artist was to create and realize an artistic design for a 16m2 advertising column in Graz’s City Park based on the project’s theme, Temporal Art.
The design: Gerhard tells the story of humanity, its creativity and its connectedness, using multiple dimensions to represent various interrelated aspects of civilization throughout time and space.