The sculpture garden
Located at Gartenstraße 32, the foundation’s main exhibition space is complemented by a captivating sculpture garden, showcasing works by renowned artists Darren Almond, Ida Ekblad, Günther Förg, Georg Herold, Ernesto Neto, Navid Nuur, Rebecca Warren, Toby Ziegler, and Inge Mahn. Created between 1987 and 2019 and spanning a broad range of media, these works offer visitors a unique chance to explore how artists have engaged with the medium of sculpture in different ways over time. Several artists delve into the interconnected notions of time, space, and nature, while others engage with the traditional sculptural forms such as the stele, relief, and the human figure.
Darren Almond
To Leave a Light Impression, 2011
Spanning photography, film, installation, painting and sculpture, Darren Almond’s practice explores ideas of time, space, history and memory, and how these interrelate. The artist unearths the symbolic and emotional potential of objects, places and situations, producing works charged with historical and personal resonance.
Darren Almond
Contact, 2012
Contact, 2012, aligns two large, rectangular sandstone tables in a subdued pink. Upon one is placed a polished bronze cylinder which reflects its surroundings. The work revolves around a recurring subject in Almond’s practice: that of the Moon. The title, Contact, refers to the first word spoken by mankind on the lunar ground.
Ida Ekblad
Sun-bewildered Tempered Tantrummed (Kons) (Constellations), 2015
Ida Ekblad’s Sun-bewildered Tempered Tantrummed (Kons) (Constellations), 2015, encapsulates the Norwegian artist’s serendipitous, evocative, and deeply poetic approach to sculpture. Presenting a paradoxical gateway that never opens, the sculpture comprises a plethora of found objects in brightly coloured hues.
Ida Ekblad
Kraken Möbel, 2019
Painted in saturated cobalt blue with black swirling octopuses for legs, Ida Ekblad’s Kraken Möbel (Octopus Furniture), 2019, belongs to the artist’s series of benches. Inspired by Norse folklore, the benches embody a striking and mysterious mythos, incorporating features of the legendary ‘Kraken’, an octopus of enormous size, said to dwell off the coasts of Norway and Greenland and terrorise passing ships.
Günther Förg
Untitled, 1989
‘What I like about the bronze[s], for example, is that they exist somewhere in a space between sculpture and painting. [...] I like the coexistence of different media and approaches in my work. Some works are concerned with dissolution, but there are also the reliefs and freestanding sculptures, where I have all the diversity and richness that I negate in the other works. It all belongs together, and I enjoy the possibility of going back and forth between them.’
Günther Förg, 1989
Günther Förg
Bronzerelief, 1987
Günther Förg began his series of bronze reliefs in 1983, following his experiments with lead and aluminium. The artist made these works with his bare hands, working first with plaster, before casting the negative impressions in bronze. Across their soft, molten surfaces, one can find lines, hatches, scrapes and other expressive marks made with a palette knife, as well as the artist’s own hands, which contrast the perceived rigidity of the bronze. The aesthetic and conceptual richness of Förg’s reliefs was grasped by art historian Bruno Corà, in his essay on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition at Castello di Rivoli in 1989:
Günther Förg
Bronzestele A, 1987
Günther Förg’s characteristically monolithic bronze steles follow his experiments with reliefs initiated in 1983, marking a significant increase in scale. Often suggestive of figures, Förg’s steles emerge from their bases in varying forms, both thick and slender. These forms were moulded from plaster – as per Förg’s other works in bronze. Indeed, revealing ridges, scratches, streaks and hatching, their tactile surfaces convey an intriguing duality between the solid and the malleable
Georg Herold
Untitled, 2015
Georg Herold introduced the human figure to his practice in 2008, with his first mannequin made from wooden roof battens. Shortly after, the artist began to wrap these ostensibly genderless structures in fabric before treating them with artificial-looking car finish. In such works, the underlying wooden skeleton becomes visible through contact with the fabric stretched over it, producing sharp edges and angles.
Inge Mahn
Pentagramme (Gefallene Sterne), 1992
Executed in 1992, Inge Mahn’s sculpture Pentagramme (Gefallene Sterne) is comprised of three five-pointed stars produced in galvanised iron. The work was initially installed in a little square in the Old Town of Düsseldorf, close to a 19thcentury monument of the Virgin Mary adorned with a halo of stars, known as the Mariensäule (Statue of Our Lady).
Ernesto Neto
hand play mind, 2013
Ernesto Neto’s hand play mind, 2013, appears as both unstable and sturdy, weightless and heavy. A sizeable modulated sculpture, the work consists of organic shapes cut in corten steel which interlock in a seemingly precarious balance, defying gravity. The constituent elements look reconfigurable and resemble simplified flowers.
Navid Nuur
Untitled, 1988–2014
Navid Nuur’s practice is guided by his fascination with materials, processes, and the transitory aspects carried by the latter. The artist often places his work between the audience and an abstract, active phenomenon, such as light, energy, or air, thereby emitting a playful and poetic strength. Transcending time, history and the imagination, Nuur’s Untitled, 1988–2014, comprises a white rock marbled with grey and ochre veins.
Rebecca Warren
The Main Feeling, 2009
The British artist Rebecca Warren makes sculptures, assemblages and constructions in a variety of materials including clay, bronze, steel and neon. She has said about her work that ‘it comes from a strange nowhere, then gradually something comes out into the light. There are impulses, half-seen shapes, things that might have stuck with you from decades ago, as well as more recently. It‘s all stuff in the world going through you as a filter...’
Toby Ziegler
Slave, 2017
In his process-oriented practice, Toby Ziegler delves into the relation between objects, images and the space in which they exist. Combining traditional sculptural techniques with new technological means, the artist manipulates a broad range of art historical references, from Dutch Old Masters to Nineteenth Century landscape paintings and Spanish still-lifes.
Further Sculptures
Bibliothek Günther Förg
Complementing the library, visitors can discover sculptures by Günther Förg, Ulrich Rückriem, Rebecca Warren and Toby Ziegler.
The meadow
Presenting three large-scale bronzes by Georg Herold.
On the hilltop
A short walk from the town centre of Weidingen, the Rodenhof offers spectacular views of the region with sculptures by Albert Oehlen and Rebecca Warren.