Grund / Ground

Micha Ullmann created Grund / Ground for documenta 8 in Kassel in 1987 and then subsequently destroyed it. The Israeli artist then installed the sculpture in a new location in Marl. While he is most famous for his memorial to the book burning at Bebelplatz in Berlin, this piece has a special meaning in his oeuvre as the artist’s first work to incorporate the ground as an essential feature.
The Marl sculpture consists of two U-shaped iron girders that form a right angle over an open pit. The end of one of the beams is shaped almost like an upside down chair and meets directly with the flat end of the other beam above the excavated area. The dirt that was dug out of the pit was used to fill in the U-beams, so that the open fourth side is now covered in grass. The resulting overall ensemble brings to mind ruins or relics of an abandoned house and its furnishings, which have been overgrown with grass. Above all, what we find here is a negative form that symbolizes a deeply ingrained memory.