2001, Der Zaun / The Fence

Der Zaun / The Fence


Project at the National Garden Show, Potsdam

Irrigation system, sound, light source, Lake Balaton Efau from Hungary, shooting gallery of the Soviet Army, steel

Bewässerungssystem, Klang, Lichtquelle, Plattensee-Efau aus Ungarn, Schießhaus der sowjetischen Armee, Stahl


Sacharow-Ross contributed to an interesting project. This was a scheme to use art to refine an urban environment that was extremely inauspicious in the ecological, aesthetic and memorial sense—the remains of the Soviet military settlement in Potsdam. The artist recalls that when he saw “his” object—the ruins of a wall on which the soldiers did assault practice, as if on a training apparatus—his personal memory was immediately switched on. Sensations, smells and sounds … Student military training—shouts, the heaviness of the submachine gun, sweat, fatigue … Ugly ruins and unpleasant memories—it is impossible to ennoble the traces of such a civilization. All he could do was to address the natural, organic and botanic (the experience of “work with the leaf” was not in vain). Sacharow-Ross lifted up the special capacities of the green shoots running down the walls, establishing a spotlight in the empty window frames—a green “chlorophyll” luminescence. The organic, botanic processes initiated by the artist won. They swallowed up the militaristic artifact, which does not seem to have been organic enough for a “normal” habitat – a victory of the organic over the artificial, alienated from man and nature.

Syntopia sculpture: Der Zaun, BUGA 2001, Potsdam, Stand Juli 2023

Exhibitions / Ausstellungen:

BUGA 2001 (Bundesgartenschau 2001), Potsdam 21.04.-10.07.2001

Publications / Publikationen:

Tarnung : Enttarnung. Kunstprojekte der Bundesgartenschau Potsdam 2001, hg. v. Elmar Zorn/Kai Vöckler, Potsdam 2001.

Refugium, hg. v. Syntopie Labor (Ausst.-Kat. Moskau, Staatliches A. W. Schtschussew-Museum für Architektur, 20.06.-20.07.2003), Köln 2003.

Ökologische Ästhetik. Theorie und Praxis künstlerischer Umweltgestaltung, hg. v. Heike Strelow, Basel/Berlin/Boston 2004.

Buchhart, Dieter: Igor Sacharow-Ross. Das Resultat ist tot, es lebe der Prozess. Ein Gespräch von Dieter Buchhart, in: Kunstforum International, Bd. 175, 2005, 242-253.

Igor Sacharow-Ross. Abgebrochene Verbindung, hg. v. Dieter Buchhart/Hans-Peter Wipplinger (Ausst.-Kat. Passau, Museum Moderner Kunst Passau – Stiftung Wörlen, 22.10.-03.12.2006), Nürnberg 2006.

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