The Jump

2016
Bronze
Dimensione 270 x 180 x 60 cm

On request

Description

Is there a new project you are currently working on?

Yes, but it is not a commission, but a reflection on a subject which just happened to spring into existence on the 31st  of December 2o12: I was drawing a jump into a new sketchbook: a leap into the New Year. A leap into age – I will be sixty this year.

We always jump – from our birth to our death, every one of us. Sometimes we have a soft landing, sometimes we crash down or even fall into a hole. We leap from childhood into youth, into adulthood – into the family, away from the family, from  one job to the next, from one country to the next, from company into loneliness. Every decision in our life is essentially a leap of faith.

This creates insecurity; you change over from the known to the unknown side: new territory.

This begins with your first steps as a child.

But the “leap” stands for more: while there is always only one leg “in the air” while we walk, creating an unstable balance, you release bath legs from the ground while jumping – almost like starting to fly, even only for a moment.

This moment bereft of gravity is the cheerful, bright side filled with adrenalin …

I’m currently modelling a jump, no, the movement of launching into one in bronze (almost absurd in this heavy material).

Diagonally opposite from the envisaged location in Gudensberg (my hometown, which celebrates my anniversary with me), are three large exhibition rooms on the ground floor of the newly built pensioners’ social club house, which I was offered to use until it’s opening. They are connected with a large high-ceilinged corridor with a long wall. I will paint this leap directly onto it, as well as cast my work smock in bronze to mount it beside it and to place my work boots in front of it – after the leap through the wall, vanished on the other side …

Or simply just dissolved in the work – all across town …

Rome, o4/o7/2o13

Excerpt from the Interview
“SEVEN QUESTIONS FROM GRUDDA TO GRUDDA”
Public Works, Il Cigno GG Edizione, Rom, 2013