World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 523 - Christine Rusche

World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 523 – Christine Rusche

In Studio 2 of De Doelen, the Rotterdam concert hall, pop venue, festival heart, congress building and party location I saw the exhibition ‘CROON-MENDES-RUSCHE, new perspectives’. The work of Anuli Croon has already been discussed (see elsewhere on this site). Now we will take a closer look at the work of Christine Rusche. At the exhibition I saw drawings that were part of designs in large spaces, including public space.

For the large foyer of the Grote Zaal of the Doelen she created the work Reverberations (resonances), a large mural and composition, consisting of dynamic shapes and lines. On view from September 2024.

Research space

This play of lines is based on a study of the architecture, space and function of the Main Hall (Grote Zaal) of the Doelen. The reverberation of the sound in that same Main Hall has also been taken into account. For example, the four central black shapes are aimed at the position of the stage – the source of music during a concert. The black shapes on the left and right are in line with the acoustic wall panels that reflect the sound on the sides of the Hall.

I speak to her at the exhibition. That evening and the following evening, the orchestra, conducted by Tarmo Peltokoski, will play Holst’s piece The Planets and Vaughn Williams’ seventh symphony Sinfonia Antarctica. It is about travel and space travel, which ties in wonderfully well with Christine’s spatial work. She is going there and is very curious about how the musical work will resonate – also with the audience and orchestra – with her work on the walls.

10 years in Rotterdam

Christine speaks good Dutch. Raised on the Baltic Sea in the former GDR, she came to Rotterdam in 2000 and stayed there for about 10 years. Christine: “That year I graduated from the Art Academy in Stuttgart. I wanted to move to another big city, preferably one with a harbour.” Through an artists’ association, the Stichting B.A.D. she was able to get a guest studio and a home. Not much later, she was given the opportunity by Arno van Roosmalen to work in a large space, the ‘gym‘ in TENT Rotterdam.

That was the beginning of her large-scale spatial work. She shows a few early works from the 1990s of overpainted photos of high mountains in southern Germany, Switzerland and Italy where she liked to go climbing from Stuttgart and later also from Rotterdam. The impressions and experiences in the mountains formed her first ideas about spatiality and temporality in her work. In 2001 she came to Rotterdam with a DAAD grant for 6 months, staying in a guest studio at Stichting B.A.D.. Rotterdam was the European Capital of Culture in 2001, a city with an exciting, open and international cultural life. In the end she stayed in the city not only for 6 months, but for 10 years, where she got to know many colleagues who worked at Stichting B.A.D., Het Wilde Weten, Duende, Kunst&Complex and Cucosa, Rotterdam artists’ workshops. She knew Anuli Croon as an artist colleague who also painted on walls.

It started with climbing in the mountains

Using the monograph Christine Rusche by Marta Herford (publisher Kerber) she shows important steps in her career. TENT, a former post office in Rotterdam’s Witte de Withstraat, was the first large space where she could work on the project Spacescapes – Landlines (2003) on the occasion of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (was on display from 01.05. – 25.05. 2003).

Drift and Snatch

Her spatial murals are usually not visible from a single point of view. You have to move through the space to fully perceive the work. In 2005 she made Drift (on display 24.07 – 18.09. 2005) for Cacaofabriek Helmond where she played with landscape motifs, not only on the walls but also on the floor. It is a visual language that evokes associations, she says. But everyone makes their own associations. “For me it was mainly: ‘How can I capture the space without stories?’ Where all those lines and graphic surfaces of mine merge with the architecture into a kind of sculpture. An immanent spatial image. That works best in black and white.”

Another key work is Snatch, which she made in 2006 for the Fridericianum in Kassel (was on display from 14.05. – 25.06. 2006). A spatial mural with a sloping wall built for it in the hall. The wall was only there during the period of the exhibition. This applies to many of her works, that they are not permanent. That is why documentation in the form of models and photographs is very important to her. Another work that is no longer on display is the mural Clash (was on display from 13.01. – 25.01. 2007) in the Van Abbe Museum (2006). “The space in the Van Abbe was black at the time. I painted it white on black.”

Interpolis, KLPD building

For the high Interpolis building in Tilburg, she made Rhumbs on the first floor in 2007 (on display from April 2007). It is a dynamic, much-used space in the office building. The title means rhumb line, a line on the surface of a sphere that intersects all meridians at the same angle. “In the form of a spiral, it winds endlessly around the earth and comes closer to the poles, without reaching them. It is a path taken by a ship or aircraft that maintains a constant compass direction and in this way moves endlessly around the globe.” That work is still there.

In Son en Breugel she created Circuit for a research and training building of the KLPD in 2008, which received the first prize for Art in Architecture from the Government Buildings Agency (from April 2008, not open to the public).

Rijnstate Hospital and Arp Museum

She worked on the staircase for the Rijnstate hospital in Velp and created the work Cross Cut there in 2009 (on display from August 2009). The intention was to visually connect the floors of the hospital – each with a different function and also with a different interior design – via the vertical space of the central staircase. In doing so, she followed the movement of the stairs. “You can only see the work in fragments when you walk through the staircase. The hospital would like people to take the staircase instead of the elevator.”

For the Arp Museum near Bonn she made Transient in 2015, a work for a tunnel that connects two parts of the museum. Here she responds to the sound of the trains, which run above the tunnel, and which spreads out into the space of the tunnel. This work was on display from 21.02. – 31.05.2015).

Marta Herford Museum and Kunsthalle Rostock

For the Marta Herford Museum, a museum for contemporary art and design in the town of Herford in North Rhine-Westphalia, designed by architect Frank Gehry (also known for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao) and with Jan Hoet as its first director, she created the work Aberration in 2015 (was on display from 21.02. – 31.05. 2015).

For the Kunsthalle Rostock she made Soundings in 2016 (was on display from 14.01. – 22.04. 2018). “The title is a nautical word and means ‘measuring the depth of water’. Rostock, like Rotterdam, is a port city. There is a rotating movement in the work, just like the movement of sunlight or daylight through the space, which always comes in through the ceiling and also creates beautiful shadows on the walls. It is a key work, also because I was allowed to paint the floor.”

And this is just a selection of the many projects.

Back in Rotterdam

Two years ago, in 2023, she heard from Rotterdam historian Siebe Thissen that there would be a commission for a mural for the Main Hall of the Doelen. She was immediately interested and presented a design. This design was accepted and in the summer months of 2024 she got to work – standing on scaffolding – with the help of two assistants, Frank Ahlgrimm and Jelmer Noordeman.

In the Main Hall of the Doelen, it is all about the stage, about the music that is played there. The space and the surfaces inside are designed in such a way that the sound is evenly distributed and the music can be heard equally well throughout the space. Previously, the large wall of the Grote Zaal on the ‘outside’ in the large foyer was only black. The mural has given the foyer a new spatial character. “The formal language of my works, such as the work Reverberations, can be understood as a ‘graphic notation’, a graphic swimming, a visual description of hard and soft, fast or slow, rhythm and movement, a visual sound space. If you now go outside after the concert, you can still see an after-image of the sounds on the walls.”

What is her experience of art life?

“Of course, it depends on what you mean by ‘art life’. There is no such thing as ‘the’ art world; it is a broad field with different actors and many faces. My experiences with the art world are as diverse as the people I work with. For me, it has been an exciting, but also adventurous and often difficult journey so far, in which I have met many wonderful and interesting people, made long-lasting friendships and worked wonderfully with fellow artists, curators and art historians, museums and exhibition houses, art funds and associations, clients, private and public art collectors and with companies, workshops, construction teams and, last but not least, my assistants who help me realize my murals.

Art and culture are a broad, diverse and dynamic field and for me a beautiful and valuable social area in which you can become professionally involved. For an artist, however, this freelance and independent work always brings with it many uncertainties, which can quickly become existential. I am grateful that I have been able to work as an artist for 25 years. This would not have been possible without the great support of the people I have worked with.”

Older GDR couple

In the Kunsthalle Rostock she walked around taking photographs in the middle of her work Soundings. An older couple who were visiting for an exhibition of figurative work elsewhere in the building happened to pass her work on their way out. “I heard them talking about it: the woman said ‘What is this supposed to be?’, to which the man said ‘I have no idea. But it is so beautiful.’ I didn’t say anything to them, didn’t say that I made the work, they thought ‘she’s just the photographer’. That was one of the nicest compliments I ever received. If you can reach someone so spontaneously and in that way with your work, it couldn’t be better.’ I got that feeling from the people and visitors of the Doelen too, when I heard ‘It looks like it has always been there’. Then it must have worked.”

Watch the video: https://www.dedoelen.nl/en/pQ3ensv/christine-rusche—reverberations

Images

(Copyright: Christine Rusche / VG Bildkunst Bonn): 1) REVERBERATIONS, 2024, 33 m x 3,50 m, mural / wall paint, Concertgebouw De Doelen, Rotterdam, NL, since September 2024, 2) SPACESCAPES-LANDLINES, 2003, 18 × 8 × 6 m, mural / installation, wall paint, wood, MDF, adhesive vinyl,

TENT, CBK – Centrum Beeldende Kunst, Rotterdam, NL, 1 May – 25 May 2003, 3) DRIFT, 2005

18 × 10 × 6 m, mural / wall paint, De Nederlandsche Cacaofabriek, Helmond, NL, 24 July – 18 September 2005, 4) SNATCH, 2006, 18 x 10 x 4,5 m, mural / wall paint, dry wall construction, Kasseler Kunstverein, Fridericianum, Kassel, DE

14 May – 25 June 2006, 5) CLASH, 2006, 10 x 6 x 4,5 m, mural / wall paint, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, NL, 13–25 January 2007, 6) RHUMBS, 2007, 5 x 5,5 x 3 m, mural / wall paint,

Achmea Kunstcollectie, Interpolis, Tilburg (NL), since April 2007, 7) CROSS CUT, 2009

6 × 3 × 30 m, mural / wall paint, Rijnstate Velp, NL, since August 2009, 8) TRANSIENT, 2015

26 x 4,6 x 3,1 m, mural / wall paint, Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, Remagen (DE)

8 February – 12 April 2015, 9) ABERRATION, 2015, 23 x 0,4 x 7,8 m, mural / wallpaint,

Museum Marta Herford, Herford, DE, 21 February – 31 May 2015, 10) SOUNDINGS, 2018

12 x 12 x 7 m, mural / wall paint, Kunsthalle Rostock (DE), 14 January – 22 April 2018. Photo with people: Photographer: Thomas Häntzschel/nordlicht.

 

https://www.christine-rusche.de/
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