For most people, they are not among the most pleasant places and are sometimes even a source of anxiety: underground parking garage entrances. In collaboration with those involved in the construction, Karlsruhe artist Lukas Schneeweiss has succeeded in transforming the original building on Herz-Jesu-Platz into an extraordinary place.
The connection between architecture and design, between interior and exterior space is so close that many people do not initially think of an artistic intervention in the building. Anyone climbing the stairs inside feels transported into a vast, ultramarine blue shimmering world. When the light shines through the blue panes, the building glows blue on the outside. Thousands of “stars”, in reality an abstract, playfully free composition of dots of different sizes, individually positioned by the artist with a love of detail and brought into a balanced, yet lively relationship, flash by day and by night. Using stencils and the sand steel technique, Schneeweiss' dots and a grid of 4-millimeter-wide lines were transferred to the blue antique glass from the Lamberts glassworks. Throughout his work, the artist repeatedly combines a conceptual, minimalist approach and clear, spatial forms with sensual, aesthetic considerations, luminous surfaces and shiny materials.
He also likes to work with lettering and signs that evoke memories, experiences, wishes and ideas in the viewer - associatively, playfully, boldly - like the starry sky in Singen's Herz Jesu-Platz. The result is a place to pause, to contemplate, to dream - with a “spiritual sense of space” (Schneeweiss) that is not usually inherent in underground parking structures.
Text and editing: Kunstmuseum Singen
