Grace

I believe that it is the fate of the Occident to bring the critically rational, wanting to understand on the one hand and the mystically irrational, seeking the redeeming experience of unity on the other hand into connection with each other again and again. Both attitudes will always dwell in the soul of the human being, and the one will always already carry the other as the germ of its opposite. This creates a kind of dialectical process of which we do not know where it will lead. I believe that as Westerners we must entrust ourselves to this process and recognise the pair of opposites as complementary. By allowing the tension of opposites to exist, we must also acknowledge that in any path of knowledge or salvation, we depend on factors beyond our control, which religious language has always called grace.

Wolfgang Pauli 1954

2021 · Grace

Geometry and Illusion

Von Einstein, Pythagoras und Gauß,
von Riemann und Euklid.
Vom Flachen hin zum Bogen,
von Absolut und Relativ.

Oh Augen, seid am Ende ihr betrogen?
Ist die Gerade etwa schief?
Machst Du, Magie, den Raum zu Zeit,
hälst Du noch mehr für mich bereit?

Es saugt Dein Geist an meiner Sphäre,
Dein Wissen gibt Dir große Ehre,
die Wahrheit doch, die Wahrheit bleibt
für Dich, Du Mensch, Chimäre.

2021 · Geometry and Illusion

Misericordia

The sculpture “Misericordia” represents our brains and protective hands over purgatory as an expression of the world fire. Perhaps – speaking to Lev Kopelev – we have to open ourselves more to charity and mercy, the longing for brotherhood and less to the ego greed, to save the unacceptable world …

2019 · Misericordia

Despair

In times of crisis, artists preferably fall back to use religious motifs to express the immeasurable suffering in the world. This is what the quite expressionistic figure group “Pieta” illustrates with the modern title “Despair”: Desperation and helplessness, the vehement shriek, asking WHY is this self-destruction of the most valuable thing that was given to us. The most precious gift is our planet, our living space, our life – everything is threatened by climate change. The sculpture is also intended to express the irrepressible rebellion against adverse circumstances – as an invitation to finally become disruptively active …

Dr. Bärbel Manitz

2019 · Despair