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A representative work of art for the European Union
Many publications, commentaries and public and private communications give the impression that the EU is sluggish, detached and powerless. This view has also crept into the thinking and acting of many. However, the EU is exactly the opposite: She is highly sensitive, agile and alert. And it has weight in the truest sense of the word, it is important! It has foundation, substance, tension and dynamism. She is curious and attractive. It is movable and movable.
The installation ‘Europa movable’ conveys this artistically with the use of the visual means ‘cradle’.
The EU is a cradle:
It ensures support, protection and security and reliable safety
* The curved and movable steel sheet
The EU balances its interconnected states:
It ensures balance and harmony, community and mutually caring reliability, as well as peace and justice.
* The self-balancing placement of the curved steel sheet on two longitudinal rails
The EU is mobile and movable:
It picks up and registers every little influence from the outside. Despite the size of its institution, it is mobile and movable, easy to move. It is therefore anything but rigid, but on the contrary awake and sensitive and at the same time storm-proof. It communicates and provides answers.
* The ability to weigh the cradle with light hand force. If I press on one side, I also see the movement on the opposite side. Then the cradle swings itself back to its resting position. Excessive weighing is not possible due to the weight. Each input pulse causes something and is answered. The materiality invites you to get involved. Communication, rest, dynamism, weight, balance. Wind and storm will also set the artwork in motion. ‘Europe movable’ is storm-proof.
The EU is down-to-earth and important, a coexistence of calm and dynamism and this lasting:
It creates a basis, a shared balance that ensures peace, quiet and relaxation and a reliable perspective on a good future for all.
* Light as a feather, the visible and noticeably very heavy steel sheet cradle is suspended on its solid base. Almost smooth on its solid foundation, immovable. Permanently and forever
Photos: Izabela Mittwollen, Oldenburg
The EU is dynamic, exciting, interesting and curious:
* The materiality and enormous thickness (7cm) of the curved steel sheet attracts interested parties optically and magnetically and stimulates them to touch = participate. At the same time, it generates respect and respect.
The EU creates a reliable and secure connection between all member states:
* The 27 stars welded to the top of the cradle represent the 27 member states in the EU. They are firmly welded to and from each other by the visual means ‘cradle’. A separation is hardly possible without traces. The loose distribution on the convexly curved steel sheet also conveys their partnership-based connection to and in cooperation with and for each other.
The EU is realistic, a success of its historical development and by no means ‘finished’, ‘painted’ and ‘polished’:
It is not new, not old-fashioned or encrusted. It changes, is always interactive and up-to-date, is ready for change and bears the traces of its lifetime. It is open to the future with a constant look into the past in the present now.
* The use of black sheet material for the cradle and welded stars. Embedded in linseed oil varnish, the rusty surfaces are sealed.
Sheet steel, convex curved, oiled, 560 cm x 180 cm x 7 cm, 5,500 kg
27 welded stars, sheet steel, 210 mm x 6 mm
movable by means of a form-fitting combination railway rail (concave) and sub-profile (convex) in the longitudinal direction increased on steel beams HEA160 lying on foundation plate
aligned on the axis southernmost – northernmost point of the Member States (Gibraltar – northern Finland)
Michael Olsen, D-Oldenburg, 2019/2024