Arc ´89

The artist himself describes the intellectual content of the arcs of Corten steel bent at 89-degree angles and arranged in two groups that make up his sculpture: “When you watch them while circling the roundabout, they seem to dance – a dance to celebrate the year 1989 and the historic moment that led to the reunion of the two German states.”
An abstract, even minimalist formal language that references a historical situation, even a political statement, is the distinctive characteristic of this sculpture created by Bernar Venet in 2016 for this site in the former Bonn government district. A total of 14 arcs made of curved, four-sided steel rods, arranged in two groups leaning towards each other, form a seventeen-metre-high arc in the middle of a roundabout which offers ever new, very different views as one moves around it. Dynamic, aspiring, with groups of individual elements facing each other that come together to form a whole, the sculpture offers a positive interpretation of German reunion as a historic opportunity. Because of this message and its powerfully dynamic appearance, the sculpture has become a landmark that dominates the Museum Mile which was built after the fall of the Wall. The project was initiated and implemented by the private Bonn-based Foundation for Art and Culture.

www.stiftungkunst.de/kultur/projekt/bernar-venet-arc-89