Ansgar Nierhoff

Formumwandlung als in sich geschlossenes System/Eisenzeit, 1990

The dimensions of Ansgar Nierhoff‘s commissioned work for the Daimler AG, which was conceived for one of the principal conference room’s inner courtyards in Stuttgart-Möhringen, relate to the architectural surroundings. Formal transformation as a system complete in itself/Iron Age is a process system that reveals Nierhoff’s artistic concept very clearly: movements for change directed at new orders. Nierhoff’s artistic intentions are rooted in aesthetic and social interest in “relations between names and the surrounding space (in terms of meaning),” and in the way people relate to the things around them.Two ‘extensions’ drawn out of a cube face each other on a rising diagonal. The one at the front is in the form of a simple column with capital, while the rear one establishes differentiation through a three-fold stepped offset to transfer the rise in the horizontal diagonal into the vertical, similar to an obelisk. These two ‘extensions,’ which are forged in free form, relate to two equally freely forged elements lying on the ground as potentials: to the left of the falling diagonal is a cube, the initial shape for the formal transformation, while bottom right a sphere created by compressing the material touches the floor as the final form. The subtitle “Iron Age” and the archaic forms refer not only to the early history of mankind, but, in combination with iron as the material used, to “time as duration inherent” in the material itself.