NHT–Neue Heimat Tirol, Blaiken Scheffau residential complex, Tyrol 2021.
"Growing Together"
Corten steel sculpture with plants on a concrete base with metall ring and stones
242 x 242 cm |
95,27 x
95,27 in.
Location: Scheffau, Tyrol
2021
Commissioner:
NHT-Neue Heimat Tirol
Production:
GB Bach Produktions GmbH, Vienna
As the unanimous winner of the selected competition of the NHT – Neue Heimat Tiro, I was invited to create my sculpture entitled "Growing Together" for the newly built residential complex in Scheffau, Tyrol.
The soul of a residential complex are the people who live here and meet each other - some for the first time: strangers become acquaintances, later friends and confidants or even opponents.
The sculpture addresses this process of first encounter, communication and the "growing together" of the people living here:
We see two halves of the head, one half with a square net, the other half with a round net. These halves are set up at a certain angle to each other so that they are joined together differently depending on the point of view when walking around them: Sometimes they complement each other to form one head, sometimes there is a distance between the two, sometimes they completely overlap - all qualities that also depict interpersonal communication. This opens up expected and completely unexpected perspectives for each and every individual. An ever new everyday experiment with point of view and insight.
When people enter into relationships with one another and then cultivate the relationships that have arisen, it takes time. That's why I choose Corten-steel as the material. Its special property of developing a patina adapted to the local weather conditions over time symbolizes this passing of time. The longer this process takes, the more robust the patina of the sculpture becomes.
In addition to the relationship between people, the relationship between humans and nature is also a central issue. I take up the title of "growing together“ literally in this respect and plant alpine clematis around the sculpture. The clematis stands for the unforeseen, the spontaneous. She winds around the two halves of the head according to her own plan, creating connections between the two parts. A symbiosis in which the human being is the support for nature, which in turn has an effect on him and gradually lets people grow together into one whole.
However, the sculpture points far beyond this residential area: We are all living through a time of polarization and division. This sculpture expresses this state of affairs, shows the different perspectives of this situation and the role that we as humans can assume in relation to one another and to nature in order to use this polarity constructively and to avoid a potentially irreversible split between people and their connection to nature.
(In these views you can see the sculpture immediately after assembly and in its final form, with a metal ring and covered little stones and plants.)
