Ulrich Rückriem

“TWO GRANITE SLABS CUT AND SPLIT TO MEASURE 200 x 200 x 12 cm, EACH SPLIT INTO FIVE DIFFERENT PARTS, REASSEMBLED INTO THEIR ORIGINAL FORMS, EMBEDDED INTO THE GROUND” – such was the instruction Ulrich Rückriem written onto the sketch for his proposed project for his third participation in Skulptur Projekte.¹ The slabs of granite Bleu de Vire that were used in his work Bodenrelief, geschnitten, gespalten were embedded in the cobbled approach to the palace near Promenade, between the footpath and the cycle path. As a kind of large-scale bluish-grey floor mosaic both sections unobtrusively blended into the open area in front of the palace. A linear pattern was made by the cuts and rows of bore holes in the stone that are a hallmark of Rückriem’s work. In contrast to his earlier stone steles with their emphasis on verticality and the stone wall he created in response to the architecture of the Petrikirche, in 1997 the artist opted for a horizontal alignment and exercised much greater restraint towards the site’s surroundings.

Daniel Friedt

¹ Ulrich Rückriem, Plan für Münster, 1996, view from above of the ground relief, construction drawing, 29.7 x 42 cm; cf. reproduction in section on Ulrich Rückriem, “The work for Münster 1997”, in: Klaus Bußmann, Kasper König and Florian Matzner (eds.), Skulptur. Projekte in Münster 1997, exhib. cat. Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster, Ostfildern-Ruit, 1997, p. 344.