INSTALLATION "A SENSE OF FAMILY", 2011
Ringturm, Vienna, Austria
The Ring Tower is a striking highrise prominently located in Vienna near the central office of the Vienna Insurance Group. The 73 meter high Ring Tower ranked as an innovative project for the re-construction of the city, a symbol of the aspiring capital economy of the Western occupation zones, a “moralizing finger-pointing in the direction of the underdeveloped Russian occupational zone on the other side of the Danube canal”. It was constructed from 1953 to 1955 according to plans by Erich Boltenstern at the Schottenring within the Viennese Ring Road and is located at the Schottenring station of the Viennese lines. Since 2006 the Ring Tower has been converted yearly into an “Art Tower”, the building being draped by painted exteriors.
The external situation in the picture seems at first glance to be that of a family idyll, maybe a Sunday excursion – yet with something strangely personal: the parents, like figures from a Greek chorus warning of some unexpected event or some imminent catastrophe. The daughter is mischievous and in a great mood while the button-eyed dog is already posing for the photo while a friend of the family, the alarm signals before her eyes, is documenting the whole thing.
More essential however is the view behind the external events. My picture deals exclusively with those values in our lives that can neither be insured nor measured in money: with love and cohesion, with the solidarity of the generations – or expressed concisely: with A SENSE OF FAMILY.
These phenomena, located on an ideal level, are the true pillars maintaining society. They are the basis of the meaning of life. Sooner than one thinks we shall be dependent on the sense of family as a survival strategy in a society stressed out by exploding medical costs and by old people shunted away. Of necessity we shall return to a “stone age model” that will enrich us and bring happiness and enable us to deal with the future!
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STAINED GLASS WINDOWS
St. Johannis Church, Gehrden, Germany, 2012
Draft and realisation exhibited at "Glass painting of the 21st century", Centre international du Vitrail, Chartres, France
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