About The Commissioned Collaborative Light-Space Installation

The artistic light-space installation takes up a unique contemporary position in the foyer of the MOK. Realized as a collaborative site-specific commissioned work, it consists of two aesthetically and conceptually related yet physically distinct artworks:

Andreas Schmid’s ceiling-hung light sculpture Geste im Raum (Gesture in Space), and Zheng Chongbin’s freestanding space sculpture With or Without Edge (Mit oder ohne Kante). Various inspirational sources from different discursive traditions here converge into a boundary-crossing synthesis. Together, they create a dynamic, open structure that actively engages in dialogue with the physical environment of the MOK as a space and place as well as the museum visitors.

Contemplatively and atmospherically, Geste im Raum and With or Without Edge each accentuate the given spatial situation in an own unique yet likewise interactive way. They subtly materialize and direct the site’s invisible lines of vision and perspective in all their potentialities: as a dynamic, relational structure oscillating between architecture, human beings, and nature, inside and outside as well as real and mirrored form. Whether seen from the Universitätsstraße or from the Aachener Weiher, the light-space installation is perceivable day and night, therein visualizing the museum as space and place. The artwork blends in site-specifically into the overall architectonic structure of the museum, expanding it with subtle and clear radiance.

The project represents the first collaboration between the two artists. Schmid and Zheng, whose exchanges are characterized by a long-standing personal connection, are both considered key players within the field of transcultural contemporary art in East Asian context.

Andreas Schmid (*1955)
Geste im Raum (Gesture in Space)
2025
26 acrylic tubes, RGB LED
L 50–275 cm, D 3 cm each tube
Programmed cycles, DMX light control
Realized with Studio Barthelmes Berlin
Acquired with funds from the City of Cologne

The electronically steered light art consists of 26 matte, LED-illuminated acrylic glass tubes of varying lengths, suspended from the ceiling at various heights, partially overlapping each other and extending into the museum foyer as an open corpus. Creating a fragile, translucent spatial sculpture, it extends diagonally along an imaginary line through the foyer, stretching from the exit of the museum shop, towards the northeast corner of the interior garden, and guiding the way to the entrance of the exhibition galleries. The placement of the light sculpture defines the architectural structure of the foyer as a space and place, framing the immediate surroundings of the Japanese garden, museum café, and outdoor park and lake area.

Through various, site-specifically programmed loops, or cycles, of approximately 10 minutes in length, the fluorescent tubes are brought to life as a light sculpture that unfolds multidimensionally, both spatially and temporally. The loops allow the individual tubes to light up like a musical composition – at varying tempos, in different colors and luminous intensities, once brightly, once dimly, sometimes disappearing completely. They recall the gestural movements in calligraphic linear drawing, likewise the rhythmic breathing and pulsating of a living organism. In an extended moment the artwork so fulfills itself only in the eyes of the beholders and their passage through the physical space. Without a definite beginning or ending, the light sculpture’s cyclically recurring visual program is experienced in a different and new way each time, depending on the position and perspective, time of day, given weather conditions, and interplay of sunlight, shadows, and reflections. Programming of the DMX light-controlled artwork was implemented in collaboration with the engineering bureau Studio Barthelmes Berlin, which has realized numerous projects with leading light artists such as James Turell and Olafur Eliasson.

About The Artist
Andreas Schmid (born 1955 in Stuttgart) belongs to a particular artist generation among the German-speaking region who intensively experienced the formative years of the People's Republic of China's Opening and Reform Policies post-1976. He was among the first exchange students to receive the opportunity to study in China through the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in the early 1980s. In this context, Schmid studied the art of Chinese calligraphy at the National Academy of Art in Hangzhou under the now internationally renowned calligrapher Wang Dongling. This learning experience had a lasting impact on Schmid's work as a light-and-space artist. Today, his minimalist, large-scale light sculptures installed in public spaces continue to be defined by elemental calligraphic principles: linearity, temporality, rhythm, and constant transformation of form. In 1993, Schmid co-curated the groundbreaking exhibition China Avantgarde at the House of World Cultures (HKW) in Berlin, one of the first exhibitions of contemporary Chinese art in Europe to date. The works of the Berlin-based artist are represented internationally, among others, at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing; Mercedes-Benz Art Collection; Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart; Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien; as well as Raketenstation Hombroich.

The freestanding acrylic-glass sculpture consists of six radially fanned-out panels that are supported at the base by stainless steel strips and connected at the center. The panels vary in width and depth and are partially worked with iridescent foil. Each panel features an individual, geometrically shaped window-like cutout, herein reminiscent of James Turell's iconic Skyspace works from the 1970s.

The overall structure resembles a revolving door, which we activate step by step. Depending on our vantage point, gazing direction, and focus, the six “windows” frame our views, insights, glimpses. As we walk around the sculpture, our viewpoints and perspectives change. The overlapping cut-out sections continually create new breakages, reassemblies, and refractions of our field of vision and spatial perception. Only through our gaze and our pacing are the multiple scenes set in motion, image by image, moreover image-in-image. The perceived environment—museum foyer, interior garden, outdoor park—becomes part of the animated artwork: framed, filtered, reflected. Different realities emerge as a bounded yet equally unbounded space. Viewers become aware of the moment of their movement, here steering the pace and intensity of their observation, and occasionally encountering themselves in the form of their own mirror reflection.

The transparent, shimmering nature of the panels opens up a prismatic spectrum that, emanating from a crystal-like center, is concentrated in the edges, rims, and fringes of the panels and their “window frames,” radiating in various directions. No two circumambulations of the sculpture are the same: external factors such as season, time of day, and weather conditions define the given situation of light and shadow, and the spectral effects of reflection and deflection. Ultimately, however, we ourselves decide the mode of our observance, as the title of the work suggests: With or Without Edge. In the artist's own words: “The title With or Without Edge implies an ambiguity that productively activates the viewer’s autonomy with regard to their manner of observing.”

About The Artist
Zheng Chongbin (born 1961 in Shanghai) graduated from the National Art Academy in Hangzhou in 1984 with a degree in Chinese Painting and taught there until his emigration to the USA in 1988. Zheng was the worldwide first recipient of an International Fellowship of the San Francisco Art Institute, where he completed his master's degree in Performance, Video, and Installation Art from 1989 to 1991. The internationally renowned artist today still based in San Francisco initially became known for his work as an ink artist. His abstract painterly ink works remain grounded in technical, aesthetic, and conceptual frameworks of classical Chinese calligraphy and landscape painting. Over the course of the past decade, Zheng’s creative spectrum has expanded to large-scale, site-specific artworks inspired by the Californian Light and Space Movement as well as New Materialism. His art is collected, among others, at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; British Museum, London; Hong Kong Museum of Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; M+, Hong Kong; The Art Institute of Chicago; as well as the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection.