Liquid red-hot iron is poured from a bucket into a mold, vans with heavy loads slowly cross a dark industrial hall, workers in protective suits monitor the processes.

Glaring light when the camera points at the molten iron.

At the end, the finished bars move out of a machine.

In addition, music by Anton Vlasov can be heard as loud as the noise of machines.

Katharina Deschka

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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    The Wiesbaden Museum has made a short film about the creation of Frank Gerritz's latest sculptures.

    They will be on display in the recently opened exhibition "Temporary Ground" as soon as the museum is allowed to reopen.

    With 22 works and series by the Hamburg artist, a comprehensive presentation of sculptures and drawings by Gerritz from the past 30 years has come together.

    "Parcours" and "Kompass" were also created especially for the exhibition in Wiesbaden, the two space-related continuous casting works.

    Accurate to the millimeter

    The film on show documents the new way of manufacturing them in the ACO foundry in Kaiserslautern.

    It opens up new possibilities for the sculptor Gerritz.

    The continuous casting process is, he says in the digital presentation of the presentation, a very precise type of production.

    His 2.4-ton sculptures are sawn to the millimeter.

    "What comes out of there left me speechless." However, the production is preceded by meticulous planning, and nothing can be changed afterwards in the parts produced in this way.

    For several years now, Gerritz has been working with the foundry in the Palatinate, which actually produces industrial parts.

    “In front of the stove it's like being in the forecourt to hell,” says Gerritz.

    When the iron is heated to 1380 degrees and then poured off at a temperature of 1320 degrees, energy is generated: “You are involved when you stand nearby.” Gerritz calls his sculptures “energy bodies”.

    Gerritz designed the resulting cast iron strands for the octagons of the Wiesbaden Museum.

    The ten “Parcours” poles lie one behind the other in the room like thresholds and guide the visitor towards the door.

    Their dimensions are precisely matched to those of the rooms, because they are works that - although heavy and immovable due to their material - subtly relate to their surroundings.

    In other works, Gerritz refers to the human body.

    In his iron blocks with an edge length of 20 centimeters, he transfers the dimensions of the human head shape into a cube.

    With a weight of 60 kilograms, the sculptures should represent the average weight of a human body.

    It is not the first time that works by Gerritz, who was born in Bad Oldesloe near Hamburg in 1964, are shown in Wiesbaden.

    As far back as 2009, reports curator Jörg Daur, works by Gerritz were on view as part of the Lafrenz Collection in the Wiesbaden Museum.

    Because Gerritz made his breakthrough at a very young age, after he traveled to New York in 1990 and was exhibited there at the beginning of 1991 by the gallery owner Eric Stark.

    Andreas Henning reports that his work is impressively present in museums on the east coast.

    The museum director hopes that the house and the exhibition will open soon: "You have to walk around Gerritz's works in the room."

    For his sculptures and drawings, Gerritz cherishes the wish that the viewer can view his works from different perspectives.

    Only then, he says, could they develop their effect, which in the case of the sculptures emanates from their surface, from the “skin of iron”, as Gerritz calls it.

    For him, each strand is an individual.

    His large-format drawings have sculptural qualities.

    In weeks of work, he covers MDF panels with pencil lines until the surface is tightly closed and has structures.

    Gerritz processes anodized aluminum plates with a wax-based oil pen.

    His sculptural drawings or graphic wall sculptures, as one wants to call the works, are black because they always think about and define the space.

    "Light is best on black"

    But when you get closer, something else becomes apparent.

    “The best way to focus on light is on black.

    The black can go really silvery or light gray, up to a deep black - that depends on how you find yourself before work.

    Preferably like in front of a sculpture that you want to understand in the room, ”says Gerritz.

    The anodized surfaces are very light-sensitive.

    The processing creates a structure in which the light is beautifully embedded.

    Before the MDF works, Gerritz doesn't even allow benches.

    Visitors who hopefully will soon be able to enter the exhibition should not just look at his work from one point of view.

    Otherwise you won't see the reflections on the surface, says the sculptor.

    For example, if visitors came close to the drawings, they were reflected in the works and could see themselves as portraits.

    Where can a drawing or a sculpture go, asks Gerritz, that it exceeds our classic understanding of drawing and sculpture or that it is somewhere in between?

    This interests him and is exactly the place where he feels comfortable: between the chairs.

    “Temporary Ground” can be seen until August 29 at the Wiesbaden Museum, which is currently not open.

    The accompanying publication “Frank Gerritz - Temporary Ground” will be published in June 2021 for the exhibition.