Ben Willikens

Auditorium: Der Raum des Erfinders, 1990

“The concept for Ben Willikens’s three-part wall mural for the Möhringen auditorium can be seen in the quadratic mural The inventor’s room, with its white circle exactly in the centre of the picture. A short grey line, an obliquely placed right angle and a small black square initially appear to suggest a rotating movement – either rising or descending. They reference both the suprematist squares of Malevich and Lissitzky’s Proun pictures. The oblique (pointing) stick directs our attention to a table prosaically provided with rubber guards, which, in turn, connects with a chair. Or perhaps one could enter into the picture in the opposite direction, through the ‘background figure’ of the chair? Certainly the tension of the whole space condenses in this central field. This causes the space – a workshop for thoughts? – to recede, making it comparatively understandable and simple. We can see a rounded arch that fades away into obscurity, but only through a narrow, high doorway opening. The explicit reference to Malevich justifies a further interpretation: for the Russian suprematists, the square and the white circle symbolize the universal life of the future.” (Prof. Manfred Schneckenburger, 1990)