STRICTURA, from Hildegard Rasthofer and Christian Neumaier, sculpture (2025), 2,95 x 3,99 x 6,82 meters, structural steel.
The site-specific spatial sculpture was designed especially for the Pavilion of Germany 2025 at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia.
The sculpture made of structural steel pushes itself into the room as a huge body – not shyly, but with an oppressive presence that immediately physically grips visitors. It is a process of spatial occupation, almost of displacement: The massive form constricts the space, forces it into a new order, creates escapes, constrictions, evasive movements. It intervenes in the space as a sculptural intervention.
The steel from which the sculpture is made is not cold – on the contrary. Its surface radiates an intense warmth that can be physically felt. It is not a pleasant warmth, but a brooding heat that condenses with the narrowness of the space into an experience of urban stress. You can feel the heat of the city, which builds up between buildings, burns on façades, collects in bodies – and culminates in this space.
The sculpture is not a still form, it is an act – a state that not only occupies the space, but turns it into an experience. It transforms the space into a physically tangible field of tension: constriction, heat, pressure. And at the same time escape, opening, outlook. It is a work that does not look at the viewer, but engages them. Not a contemplative object, but an expansive impulse that shows that space is not neutral. Space is made – and sometimes it makes us suffer.
(Photos: Josef Grillmeier)
Material cycles in the visual arts
Following the idea of circular construction, the sculpture is made of 100 per cent recyclable structural steel. Circular construction means not consuming materials, but using them only for a limited time. The use of circular materials in the visual arts has rarely been addressed to date. In order to be able to easily dismantle works of art at the end of their life cycle and reuse the material, a circularly orientated basic idea as well as a corresponding design concept and execution details are required. These aspects are taken into account in the spatial sculpture STRICTURA by Rasthofer/Neumaier.
Title STRICTURA
The title of the work refers to the Latin word root ‘strictus’, which has the double meaning of constriction and also stands for a glowing mass of iron.
https://stresstest.world/en/ausstellung/strictura
Photos: Ralph Drechsel