The Hammock Papers: Magic.

10 April 2011

Magic.

Seven Wonders of the World were known in Classical Antiquity, but today the UNESCO has counted more than 900 World Heritage Sites which are masterpieces of human architecture and huge monuments of nature.

For the first time in an exhibition, “Magic Places” is showing the wonders of nature and culture together - as equally significant creations of our planet. “Magic Places” leads us to the unique monuments in which the history of our Earth comes to life in all its wonderful variety. “Magic Places”, that is our world heritage in its wondrous diversity to which the yearning and the joy of discovery of every generation is repeatedly orientated anew.

In Oberhausen’s Gasometer, Europe’s tallest exhibition hall, the 40 metre-high sculpture of a rain forest tree is currently being produced. The crown of the artistically recreated primeval forest giant alone has a diameter of 25 metres and weighs almost two and a half tons. It has now been completed as the first section and raised. The tree sculpture is the artistic climax of the forthcoming exhibition “Magic Places” which leads its visitors to the Earth’s great natural and cultural heritage sites and makes their creative forces come alive.

“The sculpture of this “Tree of Life” stands at the centre of the industrial monument and likewise stands for the greatness and sublimity of nature – as well as for its vulnerability ", says its creator, the internationally well-known artist and photographer Wolfgang Volz. As a curator, Volz has already handled several projects in the Oberhausen Gasometer, including the "biggest moon on Earth" within the scope of the exhibition "Out of this World " in 2009/10 as well as in 1999 "The Wall" for Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The sculpture of the rain forest tree will, as part of the “Magic Places” exhibition, be framed by a sound and light installation. The setting-up of the tree is a challenge from the logistic and also construction points of view and will probably take until the end of February.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL