Galerie Nordenhake is pleased to exhibit Ulrich Rückriem, one of the most important German sculptors, coinciding with his exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. Since more than a decade Galerie Nordenhake has had the privilege to exhibit his fundamental works, which combine poetry and a sheer overwhelming force.
It has always been Rückriem's belief that sculpture must be simple, and that a piece of stone, after it is worked, should suggest no other material. For Rückriem the processes that have been used in working the stone must always be apparent to the viewer, and never obscured by subsequent handling. He therefore leaves his material almost untouched. Cuts, drill-holes and splits structure the stone and refer to the work in the quarry where the block of stone is taken from the ground. He creates simple and archaic forms, cubes or steles, either as floor- or wall-sculptures. Despite, or because of, their simple presence, Rückriem's sculptures have a highly formal tension. He tries to convince the viewer to look more carefully; what at first sight might only be a block of stone becomes more and more complex, showing an inner structure and revealing the process of its making. The intense engagement with the material is also reflected in the titles of the sculptures, by only giving the type of stone and how it was worked.
The works present at the gallery, like Granite Bleu de Vire (1991), show fundamental aesthetic practices like the vertical and horizontal splitting of simple forms as well as the change of polished and untreated surfaces. The sculptures are capable of changing the ambiance of a specific locale and the way in which the viewer experiences a space.
