NEW PARADISES - Concept for the Ludwig Museum's 'Blumenhof' and sculpture garden during the BUGA2011
April 15, 2010, to October 16, 2011

Deutschherrenhaus

During the 2011 Federal Horticultural Show in Koblenz, you can experience cutting-edge international art in a large, temporary open-air exhibition at the Ludwig Museum – set among the magnificent scenery at the junction of the Rhine and Mosel rivers. Dr Beate Reifenscheid, curator of the exhibition and director of the Ludwig Museum, will present an exhibition conceived under the title 'New Paradises', which will utilise the theme of the Garden of Paradise to reflect upon the intellectual and spiritual centre once formed by St Castor's Church and the former Order of the Teutonic Knights.

The presentation is spread across one of the horticultural show's three core areas (the Schlossplatz, the Ehrenbreitstein Plateau, and the gardens near the Ludwig Museum). The space incorporates the 'Blumenhof', which, in the form of a Garden of Paradise, has been extended on one side to the medieval Basilica of St Castor and now also reaches to the lower terminus of the newly built cable car. The so-called sculpture garden is located on the other side, nearest the Ludwig Museum.

Ground plan of the concept for BUGA 2011

The Briton David Nash sees nature and life as an inseparable unity in his work. In her work, Laura Ford deals with the question of how to integrate sculpture into the landscape. The Japanese artist Masayuki Koorida is another international participant – he has been attracting substantial attention with his unconventional 'Flowers' of polished black or white granite, which are exhibited in public spaces. The Greek artist Jannis Kounellis, who lives in Rome and was among the founders of the 'Arte Povera' movement, will carry out an art intervention in the Basilica of St Castor. The German painter and graphic artist Peter Bömmels' links to the 'Müllheimer Freiheit' group of artists makes him the most important representative of the 1980s. He will participate as a sculptor with his work 'Die sieben Steine zur Lage'. The Spaniard Jaume Plensa will present the sculpture 'Alchemy'. Located centrally in the large flower bed, it considers the concept of poetry and develops an interface within the dynamic fabric joining humanity and nature. The sculpture is covered with the names of authors. Next to Goethe, Joyce, and Shakespeare, the viewer finds Orwell, Verne, and Tolkien. A plant grows out from within the figure as the materialised form of ideas and insights. The French artist Martine Andernach, who lives near Koblenz, will also be participating. For her, nature is the measure of all things; she reduces her charismatic sculptures to several basic rectangular forms in order to produce only a very approximate illusion of the human form. HD Schrader had a solo exhibition in the Ludwig Museum from December 2010 to February 2011; he has been known for decades through his concepts for outdoor spaces, which are developed from the elementary form of the cube. He will present a project involving black nesting houses for bats: bat calls emerge from the numerous 'Bat Nesting Houses', which have been suspended from a tree. The objects that he has installed in the treetops will alter the lines of vision in the gardens. The Ludwig Museum is immediately adjacent to the 'Deutsches Eck', the juncture of the Rhine and Mosel rivers, directly behind the monument to William I, Emperor of Germany. Since 1992, approximately eight temporary exhibitions per year have allowed visitors to enjoy cutting-edge, international art in the middle of this marvellous scenery. French, German, and American works from the collection of Peter and Irene Ludwig make up the heart of the collection. These include works by artists ranging from Niki de Saint Phalle to Roy Lichtenstein, from César and Daniel Spoerri to Jasper Johns and Frank Stella. The Ludwig Museum is the only museum in Rhineland-Palatinate to have dedicated itself exclusively to contemporary art. The commitment and support of the industrialist and collector Peter Ludwig, who was born in Koblenz, and his wife, Irene Ludwig, allowed it to open as one of the museums of the Ludwig Foundation. Loans and gifts from the Ludwigs' collection provided the municipally owned Ludwig Museum with a focus that is unique in Germany: its concentration on contemporary French art.

Over the course of time, the enormous 'Thumb' by César, located outside in the 'Blumenhof', and Picasso's painting 'Le peintre au travail', inside the museum, have established themselves as emblems of the institution.

Paradiesgarten

Die Artists

Martine Andernach, 2000-2003, Standing Figure, 190 x 28 x 26cm

The sculptures of this French-born artist fundamentally relate to the human being and its proportions. Within her reductive formal vocabulary, Andernach concentrates on developing lines – often in the form of contours – and these then play a central role in her treatment of volumes. She generally develops decisively vertical forms, which may finally be reduced to a narrow rectangle. Her minimalistic forms frequently awaken faint associations with the human figure because of the small perpendicular rectangles, vaguely reminiscent of heads, which she adds to their upper extremities.

Peter Bömmels, detail from: Sieben Steine

In the 1980s, the painter Peter Bömmels was already repeatedly turning his attention to the medium of sculpture. In this work in the form of a relief, he uses seven stones to summarise the history of modern humanity, with its roots between duty and the individual's search for freedom. The frieze is to be read from left to right, as is the case in friezes from antiquity to the Renaissance. He uses an archaic visual language to illuminate mysterious aspects of his individual mythologies; in the process, he incorporates associations with pre-Columbian sculptures. In this way, he bridges the gap between ancient lost cultures and a modern, occasionally cryptic, idiom.

Stephan Andreae/Res Ingold, Ornithoport, Model for the St Castor Fountain.

In 'Ornithoport Koblenz', Res Ingold continues to develop a concept that he has already implemented at numerous locations within Germany and abroad. On the basis of birds' migration routes, the artist provides an imaginary bird airport for the use of migratory birds. As in an international airport, take-offs and landings are regulated and provided for. The accompanying announcements transmitted through the speaker system will likely remind the viewer of procedures for the regulation of air traffic. Ornithoports may be found, among other places, on the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany (KAH) and in Namibia.

Masayuki Koorida (Japan), Flower, 2008, granite, 60 x 136 x 150 cm

Viewers are captivated by the simple, but unconventional forms of the Japanese artist Masayuki Koorida's work. These works are reminiscent of molecules or amoebas, of the most basic elements of life. The objects are carved from black or white granite and polished to a mirror finish; sometimes several of them are spread across an open field. They give the impression that they might melt away or burst if touched. The sculpture is related to the 'Flowers' and 'Seed' series and is characterised by soft and rounded contours that clearly show its assimilation to the world of flora and to vegetable forms. Koorida describes the sculptural process as a procedure in which thoughts and inspirations gradually form themselves into an idea, a concrete image, in the course of the search for a universally valid language. Koorida concentrates Japanese aesthetics through the reductive aspect of his creative process, which also opens up a broad horizon of complex perceptions to the viewers of his work.

Kounellis, Holy Cross Church Bremen, 2008

The former Professor of the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts and internationally renowned artist Jannis Kounellis has developed a public space intervention for the Basilica of St Castor. As is the case in all Kounellis' works, it will enter a dialogue with the spirituality of the sacred space by means of its nuanced materiality and its reductive formal idiom and invite its viewer to pause and consider the space. Associations with the concept paradise arise, as with those of transience and death.

Laura Ford, Espaoiered Womman III

In her work, Laura Ford deals with the question of how to integrate sculpture into the landscape. Humanity, animals, and plants offer the themes for her work. A tendency to alienation is further heightened in the work 'Espaliered Woman III': the trunk of a tree stretches out its branches like several pairs of human arms and is also made capable of overcoming its immobility by means of its human legs. As the title indicates, however, the 'Espaliered Woman' ¬– this singular hybrid of a woman and a tree with its branches – is bound to an imaginary lattice. Lacking a face and part human and part plant, this bizarre and positively uncanny creature develops a mysterious life of its own instead of offering the viewer a counterpart. Laura Ford's hybrids incorporate the surrounding landscape as a part of their fantasy world.

David Nash, Cast Iron Dome

Works by David Nash are to be found in well-known museums around the world; he is to be counted among the preeminent contemporary sculptors. Nash has pursued decidedly current tendencies in the various phases of his development, but his adopted home Wales' beauty, particularly its extensive woodlands, has always been a major source of inspiration. For him, nature, life, and the creation of art form an indivisible unity. He has primarily devoted himself to the medium of wood; his bronze and iron casts also generally develop out of works originally executed in wood. He explores the idiom of this material and lets it flow into his works: the fragility of tender new branches, the bulk of whole trunks, wood's breathing and cracking, and the stability that wood can provide. Nash's investigations into the themes of nature and growth, transience and spirituality, also inform his work 'King and Queen', which was originally carried out in blackened oak.

Jaume Plensa, Alchemy, 2006, bronze, plants, series of 6, 205 x 158 x 120cm. Courtesy Gallery Scheffel, Bad Homburg

The Spaniard Jaume Plensa is among the most important figures of the younger generation of sculptors. He is known for raising questions and his works are known as sculptural ideas that leave many questions open. They inquire into life's fundamental experiences and their presence continues to reverberate within the viewer. William Blake's adage 'One thought fills immensity' provides the leitmotif of Plensa's work. The artist sees great poetry as sculpture and he sees language and the sounds of words as the energy resonating from his sculptural material. He seeks to poetically concentrate and to intellectually fathom space. His sculpture 'Alchemy' plays on these thoughts regarding poetry and ties them into the dynamic fabric joining humanity and nature. The sculpture is covered with the names of authors. Alongside Goethe, Joyce, and Shakepeare, the viewer finds Orwell, Verne, and Tolkien. A plant grows out from within this figure, bearing the names of authors, and gives material form to ideas and insights.

HD Schrader, Bat Nestinghouses, Animation for New Paradises 2011

This sculptor and conceptual artist works close to and closely with the natural environment. His spectacular sculptural installations activate and interact with nature. He created a site-specific sound installation related to bats for the 'Blumenhof', because many species of bats are endangered. The nesting houses derive from his strict adherence to the conceptual principle that all of his sculptures be traceable back to the form of the cube. The nesting houses simultaneously serve as an invitation to bats and offer humans the chance to hear the sound of the otherwise inaudible melody of their calls.