Ring Quader – Gleichlauf

“Ring Quader – Gleichlauf” is the first work in the Ring Quader series. This is where the set-up is described that all the others share.

Three bodies one inside the other, with a common centre: a ring, within it a smaller ring, within that a coloured cuboid. Each is built from rods, each carries its own landscape, and the sizes are nested so that the three never touch in any position – each can turn freely. The rings have a rectangular cross-section, a straight shell outside and inside, and two side discs with restless rods; a single grid runs seamlessly over all the edges. Each side of the cuboid carries its own palette colour.

The three hang together like springs: when the outer ring turns or clicks into place, the movement passes inwards with a delay – the inner ring follows softly, the cuboid last. In addition, each turns slowly in its own direction and makes its own gestures: a wheel, a flip, a swinging as if on a rubber band. The light stands fixed in space; the rings cast shadows on one another and on the cuboid. Cubes made of cubes roll on all three bodies and plough their trail into the rods. The camera glides calmly around the ensemble, steps back into a wide shot, travels slowly along the shell and looks in through the opening of the outer ring. Whoever touches an object punches a square hole around it into the ground.

Ring Quader is the fifth series after Minimal Quaderspuren, Minimal Sphere, Raw Cube and Minimal Ring: one body becomes three, which swing with one another.

The landscapes of this work: outside, cross ribs like a tyre tread; inside, bands with gates; on the cuboid, column bands.

Placement in the post-digital model of positing

Three bodies turn in the same direction. The order lies in the synchrony, the deviation in the delay with which the movement passes inwards.

The series works with grid, rhythm and repetition. Deviation comes from the height at which each rod stands in the ground, and from time: the movement of the outer ring reaches the inner ring and the cuboid only with a delay, so that three bodies carry the same impulse in different phases.

Ring, ring and cuboid are concrete forms, in the ground as in the bodies upon it. Only in their coupling – like springs hanging from one another – does the movement receive an informal impulse: it swings on, overlaps itself and never quite comes to rest. Three concrete structures whose interaction has an informal consequence – here again lies the field of tension between the concrete and the informal.

Between the non-representational and the representational: the spatial view alone already presents the concrete forms representationally, as bodies in space – here as three nested ones that cast shadows on one another. The series is thus in fact a virtual sculpture in motion – a sculptural digital animation.