Doppelnaturen

Inner Spaces in Interiors as Outdoor Spaces

Text: Hans Rudolf Reust, 1994

The spatial situation of this work is complex. The structural remains of a small production facility in the Kreuzberg district in Berlin consist of a ramp, a walled enclosure, a fire wall, and an iron girder construction that divides up the open-air interior space. Exposed to the elements, this interstitial space – literally a space in between – is open to all kinds of utilisations beyond utility. Having found the site in precisely this condition, Maja Weyermann added 16 hanging glass panes as well as a shallow pond of water that is sprouting horsetails. While the glass panes, rusted and marked by the traces of vibrations from energetically moving cords, surround the pitch-black pool of water containing horsetails on two sides, the reflected plants are sketched out in wild organic strokes. Superimposition is part of the drawing, and the drawing is mirrored by the organic structure. The silence of the ensemble in the light rain is dominated by an irresolvable tension that emerges inexorably between unrelated natural forms and a drawing linked with digital associations. Between the upright stalks, the concentric circles of falling raindrops extend out unpredictably.
At the same time, the vagaries of the drawing are reflected – in limited formats – in the uncontrollability of nature. Blackness encounters blackness in its luminosities. The authority of the space, which otherwise determines installations, seems broken by the openness of a pre-existing interior space. This interior structure defines a fleeting setting for art – as well as nature, drawing and architecture. The statics of one of the oldest plants on earth in terms of world history confronts the statics of a decaying architecture.
It is as if the art, having become precarious, could capture a different kind of stability in nature. When the transparent, reflecting drawings and the reflecting water change in the changing light, the sculptural presence of the stalks remain the same, with movement caused by the wind scarcely perceptible. In the reflection, the work closes itself off to the space it takes in.

Text in: Doppelnaturen, exh. cat. Maja Weyermann (ed.), Berlin 1994.