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| Görlitzer Park |
I
kind of took a break this August, at least from staring at a computer
screen. Unfortunately, I did not use the free time to have plenty of
exciting adventures in exciting places that I could now write about.
It was a summer so comfortably monotonous, alternating between
ice-creams and cappuccinos, that in the end it brought out the
unknown in the familiar. Walking with a friend one night a sculpture
in the park caught our attention. Görlitzer Park has always been one
of my favorite parks in Berlin. Not so much to chill and lay down on
the grass, therefore it is either too dry or too littered with
cigarette butts. It is the strange landscape of the park that
fascinates me. In the middle of Görlitzer Park there is an enormous
pit. I always thought it was the result of World War II bombing. But
the only battle that took place in this natural arena were the snow
ball battles between the adjoining neighborhoods Kreuzberg and
Friedrichshain. The park was set up in the early 1990s and the ruins
in the middle of the arena are the remainders of a former railway
tunnel. It is quite exhilarating to drive your bike down the pit. Yet
the most fitting recreation I ever saw in the pit was in 2007 when I
was living across the park: on daily basis a few people under the
influence and clearly without working obligations, played the luxury
game of golf in the pit. Indeed, if one gives it a thought, golf
takes up way too much leisure time than a business man can really
afford.
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| Rüdiger Preisler, Schreitender Mensch |
Görlitzer
Park's pit has an out-of-space quality. This is especially due to the
intriguing sculpture that hovers at its entrance. It is made out of
steel. The huge poles curiously waver into one direction and make a
zigzag on the top. Staring at the structure rising up against the
night sky my friend and I imagined an undecipherable cosmic
connection or a reference to an astrological constellation. Later I
found out that we were not so wrong in our guessing. The sculpture
does have a universal message. It was made by the German artist
Rüdiger Preisler and is titled Schreitender
Mensch
(Striding Man). These steel poles are thus the longs legs of a person
striding forward. Art historically Alberto Giacometti's sculpture
L'Homme
qui marche
may come to mind, depicting a lone man in mid stride with his arms
hanging at his side. L'Homme
qui marche
is seen as the incarnation of 20th
century solitary man striding ahead in a godless universe. Rüdiger
Preisler's version just shows these long legs in a balanced stride,
The torso is left out, and thus also the head with its rational
thinking. For Joseph Beuys the torso was an image for mankind,
waiting for its completion, its transformation. Rüdiger Preisler's
focus on the legs gives another dimension – no hopeful message here
of future transformation, but the existential issue of mankind's
walking on earth, yet to what purpose? As B.B. King put it: “Better
not look down, if you want to keep on flying. Put the hammer down,
keep it full speed ahead. Better not look back, or you might just
wind up crying. You can keep it moving, if you don't look down.”
The
advice not to look down reminds me of my visit to my parental home in
the Belgian country at the beginning of this summer. My father took
me along visiting an artist in our village Kapellen. Dirk Wauters' farm house
is on the other side of the cemetery. Such an outlook must do
something to a person, I guess. Birth and death are like the front-
and backside of life, Beuys said - a positive tension he wanted to
bring back to our industrial society that desperately tries to ignore
the latter. Yet for Dirk Wauters death not only keeps him awake while
looking out of the front window, it also took over the backyard where
he installed a Cimetière
Imaginaire.
Living between two cemeteries, a real and an imaginary one, the flow
of life is condensed in the artist's studio, which spreads out
through the whole house. Here Dirk Wauters registers the passing of
time in a meticulous way: every day the artist makes a photograph, a
drawing, some notes, and a composition. With death luring on both
sides the resulting art pieces don't really get out of the house.
Anyhow, they are not made with the purpose to be shown in
exhibitions. One might feel the temptation to tell Dirk Wauters “to
go out and get a life”, yet his daily endeavor is actually all about being utmost alive: it entails the courage to look down in the mud
and fall over and over again.
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| Dirk Wauters' steel sculptures in the barn |
The
art made in the studio does find its way to the backyard. Based on
his daily work in the studio Dirk Wauters makes sculptures out of steel, especially
in the form of sarcophagi. These sculptures are also used as sound
installations, played upon by the artist. Like in Rüdiger Preisler's
Schreitender
Mensch
the rusting steel is part of the work. The sarcophagi are kept
simple, without inscriptions or decorations. The curves of the body
are integrated in the pieces, or a small cut is made, like a lookout
, allowing the person inside to see outside, yet without opening the
lid. Put together in the garden the sarcophagi are part of an
imaginary cemetery. Why imagining a cemetery with sarcophagi? Maybe
Dirk Wauters is trying to finish rather than being interrupted by
death on the real cemetery. That brings us back to the striding man
on earth, where there are things to be done and games to be won. A
last advice, now from Dr. Seuss: “Always be dexterous and deft, and
never mix up your right foot with your left.”
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| Sound sculpture by Dirk Wauters |