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Jewellery by Artists: From Picasso to Koons, an exhibition organised by the culture and art portal Arterritory.com

Destinations · Europe · germany · Düsseldorf · Routes ·

Neuss, only a twenty minutes' drive from Düsseldorf, is a small town, the doors of its red brick dwellings bearing wreaths of onions and other exhibits of the autumnal harvest's bounty. The streets are nearly empty, the road leading off into fields of maize and apple orchards. More narrow than most of Germany's highways, the place offers a magically authentic countryside that has mostly been lost in this part of Europe. The Hombroich Cultural Environment near Neuss is home to one of the largest and most ambitious cultural projects in the Düsseldorf area - a unique synthesis of nature, architecture and art, it is actually a major project on a European scale. It's located at two separate sites, ten minutes apart. The sites are as different as night and day - one, Museum Island Hombroich, is a historic park that has been transformed into a place for art, nature and adventure; the other site is a former rocket base -- Raketenstation Hombroich -- the former bunkers of which have been converted into galleries and other cultural establishments. Both of the project sites began as a private initiative, the prominent real estate investor Karl-Heinrich Miller seeking an appropriate place for his vast and rather eclectic collection of art. The first site was the museum island. The old park and surrounding area were purchased already in 1982, and in 1987 its transformation was undertaken on Cezanne's principle of art alongside nature. The entrance is through a small pavilion, where one can get a ticket and a map. After entering, you'll experience a walk in the unknown that will affect all five senses and perhaps even a sixth - it seems like another world, and if you don't meet another visitor it can seem like you are all alone on the planet. Ducks and geese are your companions, preening and preparing for winter. The exhibition halls have no attendants - there's often no one around. The park is 250,000 square metres in size and the exhibits are arranged in a kind of choreography in which surprise follows upon surprise. Descending into the ravine by way of the stairs, one reaches a peculiar sort of crossroads - a long, slender building called the Tower. Its interior is entirely white and there is nothing within but four open doors - one has the sense that one might come across a bear or other woodland creature, depending upon the doorway one chooses... there are unique acoustics in this space, intensifying the strangeness of this inimitable place. Continuing straight along the path, one runs into a rectangular red brick building with no windows, only a door. Heavy, of metal, the door opens slowly. The name of this pavilion is the Labyrinth and it contains part of Miller's collection. The layout here is like corkscrew that leads you to yet another door. It turns out that the building actually has four doors, but the view from each is absolutely identical - the same hedgerow and path make you inspect each door to try to determine whence you came.

Most of the Hombroich museum island pavilions were created by the sculptor Erwin Heerich, and they are works of art in themselves in some sense. They are like living sculptures that shape-shift depending upon the natural light and the angle of view. The park also has a cafe, the concept of which is as unusual as the rest of the site. The offerings are simple and perfect after a proper promenade - pasta, fried potatoes, bread, and salad. It's a buffet and everyone can take as much as he or she considers necessary. The dishes are at the counter - there is no menu and no price list. You serve yourself, meaning that you also clear your own dishes. You pay whatever you consider necessary, too. Emerging into the park, one's emotions are strange indeed - it's like coming out into Alice's Wonderland - you come out of a kind of hole in the time-space continuum, where life passed by laws unlike those in the rest of the world.

No less colourful an adventure - but completely different - is a visit to the Raketenstation Hombroich. The 13 hectares of the former NATO rocket base were added to Miller's properties in 1994. Until the US and the Soviet Union concluded a comprehensive arms treaty, this was a rocket base and wasn't noted on any map. The demilitarization took place in 1992 and 1993. The impression this place leaves is still surreal. Leaving your car in the car park, the only thing that lets you know that you're going to encounter art is a 14-foot stone sculpture that exceeds the old army watchtower in scale. The rest of the landscape consists of rolling hills, apparently - but the green hillocks are actually the old bunkers. This sort of wilderness is well-preserved, winding paths leading between apple and pear trees. The central or at least most imposing art object here is the 2004 work Langen Foundation by the Japanese artist Tadao Ando. On an overcast day, the low beige concrete and glass building, reflected in the artificial lake beside it, is oddly and poetically lovely. There's an unbelievable lightness and airiness to it, as if the building had focused the greyness of the day in itself. It's said that the great collector Marianne Langen, at the instant she first saw Ando's project, decided to bring it into being by her own means - the last great work in her collection becoming the home of her collection. Ensconced in the seeming rolling hills that are of course bunkers; the museum is only seen in its tiniest part. Most of the space is below ground - six meters below, it cannot even be sensed from the surface. The eight-metre ceilings give the space an unbelievable vastness. The entrance is along a stone path by a line of cherry trees and the lake. The Langen collection of Japanese art is above ground, its space narrow and long, the light pouring in giving it a warm, intimate atmosphere. One can get here through one of the glass corridors that envelop the beige concrete carcass like an envelope. The glass envelope is not merely aesthetic but also has a function - it protects the concrete structure from rain. Another glass corridor leads down into the underground galleries, where changing exhibits are on display. The lower galleries are 436 square metres in area and mostly devoted to temporary exhibitions.

Not far from the Langen Foundation one can find the Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza's Siza Pavilion, designed in cooperation with the Bavarian architect Rudolf Finsterwalder. The Pavilion holds a museum of architecture and an archive of photographs. The road to these runs along another bunker transformed into an art gallery, its existence in the green hill revealed only by the glass doors at both ends. The Siza Pavilion is a red brick building with a steel roof, the surrounding landscape practically entering the structure through the gigantic windows. The greenery is dominated by a pear tree, the yellow pears ripe when we were there. The mixture of nature that isn't formalized and the art spaces come together in a synthesis that is truly unforgettable, its aftertaste lingering long after you've left.

 

^11/2010

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