KIT Karlsruhe 2015

reset

New administration building for the dismantling of the reprocessing plant (WAK) at the Karlsruhe Technology Center (KIT)

• Visually vertical continuous wall drawing over 3 floors
• Silver leaf on acrylic
  approx. 150 sq m

“Back to the green field” The metamorphosis as the final goal: the meticulous dismantling of mass, which, with enormous care and corresponding slowness, strives towards its dissolution.

The walls were first painted with a glazing technique using several layers of different colors, for which I prepared an extremely smooth surface. The colored, watery overlays and watercolor-like textures create depth, movement, and space—an illusion of nature or landscape. Even though the two walls are not visible together in the building, the drawing ignores the intermediate ceiling and visually extends through both floors, thus emphasizing the theme—"dissolution."

Amorphous, organic-looking rings of silver leaf were then applied to the painting. Working on the wall required meticulous attention to detail and concentration, and the leaves were applied piece by piece, while I also had to consider the crosses that would mark the radiation-free walls during the deconstruction process. Time and slowness were important to me conceptually. It addresses the "here and now."

The rings form intersections and overlaps, suggesting spatial depth through their varying sizes and line thicknesses. They move upwards like dancing bubbles, becoming smaller and less numerous and dense, seemingly disappearing "above." Although the silver leaf lies flat on the painting, the changing daylight with all its colors and the movement in the space is reflected (not mirrored; that is, only the light, but not the contour, is "reflected back"), thus acquiring an extraordinary vibrancy.

Heike Weber and Walter Eul, 2015