Where the town of Unna glows brightly

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December 21, 2008

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Where the town of Unna glows brightly

When the 150-year-old Linden Brewery in Unna closed down in 1979, all that remained was a building with labyrinthine vaulted cellars. Almost 20 years on, the city remembered this dream-like Sleeping Beauty castle - and resolved to make a virtue out of necessity by transforming the industrial ruin into a Light-Art Centre that would be unique in the world.

Keith Sonnier ranks among the world's leading light-artists.

Their magical effect comes alive as darkness falls: the "Fibonacci Series" by Italian artist Mario Merz.

In the "Floater 99" space designed by James Turrell, physical boundaries seem to disappear.

Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (6 images)

Or, as Unna's cultural director Axel Sedlack puts it: "To make this spatial cosmos gleam, shimmer or glow." All the light installations were designed specifically for these spaces. Here you can see the works of Documenta artists like Keith Sonnier, Joseph Kosuth and Christian Boltanski, along with Rebecca Horn, Mischa Kuball, light-art pioneer James Turrell or Olafur Eliasson from Iceland, whose investigations of waterfalls, fog and rainbows bring nature right inside the museum.

"Tunnel of Tears"

Under a sheet of glass at the entrance to the cultural centre is a the shaft of a former rotary lift which now houses the neon installation "Me (in dialogue)" by Dutch artist Jan van Munster - a kind of virtual lift that connects the subterranean exhibition spaces with the external world. Outside, on the 52-metre chimney stack, the "Fibonacci Series" by Mario Merz glows in blue neon script. This famous sequence of numbers, discovered by the medieval mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa, appears to extend into infinity - a landmark for Unna that casts its beam far and wide. It also forms part of a public network known as "Hellweg- ein Lichtweg" ("Hellweg - a path of light"), which connects the numerous light-art creations of neighbouring towns, such as the spectacular 1996 light installations by British artist Jonathan Park in the Duisburg Nord Landscape Park steelworks. At night, above all, the Ruhr metropolis glows in the most iridescent colours.

Read the whole piece by Peter Liffers in the "Ruhr Metropolis" issue of MINIInternational.