In mid-August a proposal, entitled “Zäsur 45” (Caesura 45) was submitted for a competition for the town of Neustadt an der Orla. The task is to design a monument to commemorate the end of the Second World War seventy-five years ago.
The concept:
This place of remembrance points to a caesura in German history, the caesura between collapse and a new start. The date 1945 stands for this. Even in its short form, 45, it is charged with secular meaning. The number 45 is therefore the basic motif for the art object in an open space. The caesura is placed into the number, in that the legibility of the numbers’ forms is subordinated to the image of the caesura. Free-standing metal stelae transfer the forms of the numbers into the third dimension. The top parts of the number 4, blood-red, are an inclined plane that falls away in the direction of viewing to a low point. The top parts of the number 5, hopeful and growth-saturated in green, form a plane that points steeply upwards. The kinks in the planes in the middle of the object make up a right angle. When a viewer walks around the object, a succession of new images appears. The legibility of the numbers and the directions of the planes are lost to perception at times and then regained. In this sense, the object is alive.
Zäsur 45 consists of galvanised, painted steel sheets, fixed to a concrete foundation. Lascaux acrylic paint, which has extremely intense colours, would be used for the painting, in addition to coatings for UV and graffiti protection.