Spalten

“Spalten” is the basic form of the Minimal Quaderspuren series. This is where the set-up is described that all the other works share; each of them changes exactly one rule of it.

The field beneath the objects consists of identical cuboids, one per grid cell, each with a narrow gap to its neighbours. They are not compressed but pushed into the ground to different depths – this produces a city of rectangles. Each surface carries exactly one colour from the palette; the light adds only gradations: roof, sunny side, shaded side. The grid changes from scene to scene between medium, coarse and – rarely – fine.

The objects are cubes made of cubes, with the same number in every direction. Each rolls over its edges in its own rhythm. The floor gives way to it: under the cube it lies exactly against its underside, in front and alongside the cuboids are pressed down and tip away, behind it they spring back. The trail keeps the colour of the cube for a while. Whoever touches an object punches a square hole around it into the ground – it carries the colour of the cube and only slowly grows closed again.

The landscape of this work is built from one figure: vertical bands, each at its own height.

Placement in the post-digital model of positing

The basic form of the series: one track, up and down, nothing else. Everything further changes exactly one rule of it.

The series works with grid, rhythm and repetition. Deviation comes from the height at which each cuboid stands in the ground, and from the sequence: cubes rolling one behind the other are at different phases of their rotation. The repetition lives on this variance.

Square and rectangle are concrete forms, in the ground as in the bodies upon it. Only where the movement meets the ground does it receive an informal impulse. Two concrete structures whose interaction has an informal consequence – here again lies the field of tension between the concrete and the informal. Between the two poles, stages can be traced here: the fixed grid, the cube rolling edge over edge, the ground that gives way and springs back, the trail that holds its colour only for a while.

Between the non-representational and the representational: the spatial view alone already presents the concrete forms representationally, as bodies in space. The series is thus in fact a virtual sculpture in motion – a sculptural digital animation.