Walter De Maria’s Large Red Sphere at Kunstareal in Munich

WALTER DE MARIA:
LARGE RED SPHERE, 2010
Permanent Installation in the Munich Kunstareal

Opening:
23 October 2010

LARGE RED SPHERE’ IN THE TÜRKENTOR
OPEN:
EVERY DAY EXCEPT MON.
OCTOBER–DECEMBER 12.00– 3.00 pm
ENTRANCE FREE

Kunstareal in Munich
Türkentor, Türkenstrasse 17

www.pinakothek.de/presse

With ‘Large Red Square’ in the Türkentor Walter de Maria has gained a place of considerable prominence in the very city in which he produced a key installation in keeping with his ‘one room – one work’ principle back in 1968 – his ‘Earth Room’ in Heiner Friedrich’s gallery. Munich is however also the city in which his design for the epoch-making ‘Earth Sculpture’ of 1972 for the Olympic Games was not, unfortunately, turned into reality. Since 2001, the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen has been striving to secure a seminal work by Walter De Maria to provide a more intensive focus on installation art from the second half of the 20th century. To achieve this aim, the support of the Udo and Anette Brandhorst Foundation, which already owned a number of pieces by the artist, was secured.

Walter De Maria suggested a sphere of polished red granite, forging a link to his earlier work on this geometrical shape. In 1990 he completed a comparable installation for the Assemblée Nationale in Paris, followed in 2000 and 2004 by works for two museums on Naoshima Island in Japan (Noashima Contemporary Art Museum: ‘Seen / Unseen Known / Unknown’; Chichu Art Museum: ‘Time / Timeless / No time’). In keeping with his concept, the Munich sphere is also closely related to its surrounding space. Reinhold Baumstark, the former Director General of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, decided on the Türkentor as a suitable site together with the artist. This fragment of the former Prinz-Arnulf Barracks from the early 19th century that has not be used for decades—also known locally as the ‘Türkenkaserne’ (Turks’ Barracks) as it adjoins Türkenstrasse—is situated between the Pinakothek der Moderne and the Museum Brandhorst, directly opposite the ‘Klenze Portal’ at the Alte Pinakothek, marking a unique position within this urban setting. Through the close cooperation between Walter De Maria and the architects Sauerbruch Hutton, and taking its historical fabric into consideration, the ruinous building was remodeled so that the sculpture and architecture relate to one another. Analagous to new requirements, the immediate vicinity of the ‘Türkentor’ has also gained a new appearance.

By placing ‘Large Red Sphere’ in such an utterly different cuboidal space which still bears many traces of the past, a place of aesthetic experience and historical visualisation has been created. And it is in this dialectic that what makes the cooperation between the artist and the architects so special can be found, namely a result that is clearly distinct from Walter De Maria’s earlier works although certain parallels to ‘The Broken Kilometer’ (1979) in New York cannot be dismissed.
The sculpture ‘Large Red Sphere’ of 2002 by the artist Walter De Maria (*1935) was acquired by the Udo and Anette Brandhorst Foundation in 2006. Installed in the Türkentor that has been renovated and remodelled by sauerbruch hutton architects, the sculpture was opened to the public on 23 October, 2010. The building project could only be carried out as the Stiftung Pinakothek der Moderne contributed the majority of the construction funds necessary, once again enabling the completion of a project in the public domain.

Walter De Maria’s ‘Large Red Sphere’ in the Türkentor enriches Kunstareal in Munich in an extraordinarily succinct manner and forms an important hinge between the Pinakotheken and the Museum Brandhorst.

LARGE RED SPHERE’ IN THE TÜRKENTOR
OPENING TIMES:
FROM 24 OCTOBER 2010
EVERY DAY EXCEPT MON.
OCTOBER–DEZEMBER 10.00–16.00
ENTRANCE FREE

Press Dept. at the Pinakotheken
Tine Nehler M.A. | Head of the Press Dept.
Pinakothek der Moderne and the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen
Kunstareal | Barer Strasse 29, 80799 Munich
T +49.(0)89.23805-1320 | F +49.(0)89.23805-125
E press@pinakothek.de, www.pinakothek.de/presse

Stiftung Pinakothek der Moderne
Founded in 1994, the Stiftung Pinakothek der Moderne has been inspired by the conviction that civil society permanently needs impulses for its own progress. The foundation initiated and spearheaded the financial support for the construction of the Pinakothek der Moderne with donations of 13 Mio. EUR. Since then the Stiftung Pinakothek der Moderne, which is independent in defining the use of its donations, supports the collections of the Pinakothek der Moderne especially in terms of the spatial and functional intermediation of art. Along these lines the Stiftung Pinakothek der Moderne took the initiative in 2009 to enhance a stronger vitalization of the Kunstareal München. Its goal is to amplify the access to the different collections, to increase their visibility and to promote their cooperation with each other.