The starting point for all considerations and sensations is of course the space, which I experienced as very special from the outset. That is due on the one hand to its unique shape, which I in no way experienced as three-dimensional, but rather as a ‘row’ (from left to right), as an opening that started from a midpoint (far left). On the other hand, what you only perceive at second glance plays a big role, namely the enormous thickness of the external wall, to which the room’s dimensions are in absolutely ridiculous proportion. (At its narrowest, the room is only 47 cm wide; the external wall is 1.2 m wide at the same point.) A real containment!

The relationship between the work and the space is in no way technical, not constructivist, because nothing is architecturally, mechanically connected with the space, nor are the quantity or size proportions demonstrably derived from it. The relationship is conceptual. It interprets the space, defines it and furthermore a new situation arises in which the space interprets the work. The formation of the cylinders functionalizes the space (‘left’ a field with ‘potential’ sculptures, ‘right’ the ‘stage’).

The enormous protective external wall confirms what one may already disquietingly suspect: the tower’s protective wall, formerly intended to protect from danger without, might now work in the opposite direction.

For me, the elements, the plaster-graphite cylinders, are to be understood in a strange combination both as abstract and invented, as well as read as objective, as unknown technical blocks, weights, containers, whose significance we do not know. This perhaps unsettling combination is certainly very important for the work’s associative power. One might say that this work, in addition to the described architectural aspect, according to which the work follows the flow of the space and simultaneously contradicts its volumes (the mass of the sculpture on the left, the mass of the open space on the right), that the work therefore in addition to this architectural aspect also has an associative, technological aspect. It arises when one looks out of the window, an ironic, perhaps mean, contradiction.

And thirdly, there is a literary aspect: ‘sehr sehr’ (very very). They are two words that are binding (objective = legible) and simultaneously non-binding (without a statement) in the same way as the bodies. Just as the bodies are weights as a metallic mass (they could be from a longcase clock), so too are the words ‘sehr sehr’ weights for language.

(From a letter from MONIKA BRANDMEIER dated 7th April 1987)

First presentation in the context of the Buchberger Sommer 1989 [Buchberg Summer 1989]

monikabrandmeier.de