Volumina / Volumes

In 1973 – years before gaining recognition for his contribution to Documenta – Ansgar Nierhoff created the monumental stainless steel sculpture Volumina. It consists of three rectangular elements that are identical in their basic shape, but differ in their positioning and how they have been altered. One is standing upright on its narrow side, one is tilted, and the other is almost horizontal. They are staggered one behind the other, making them appear frozen in motion, comparable to falling dominoes.

The geometric character of the sculpture and the cold smoothness of the material, however, are broken up by the fact that the elements have bulges and even creases. Karlheinz Novald, author of the catalog for the first Nierhoff exhibition in the Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Museum in 1975, saw this act of deformation as having the “signature of brutality, comparable with the order-loving method of beating a bourgeois sofa cushion in the middle.”

The bulged surfaces are echoed the similarly bulging base, which is paved in place of a pedestal. The sculpture is located in the entrance area of the Brühl Amtsgericht on Neumann-Platz, which was redesigned and newly built in the early 1970s as a “new center” in the western part of the historic city center.