Karlsruhe can look back on three successful years in the media arts; to date it is the only city in Germany to be designated a UNESCO City of Media Arts. And light artist Rainer Kehres is once again part of it. In 2019, he installed a waterfall of globes on the façade of the town hall called Cascade, and now he has set up a gateway of globes at the beginning of where the Marktplatz (market place) connects with the Schlossplatz (palace square), the Via Triumphalis, as a bridge to the world.
“This Globenbogen (arch of globes) marks the end of a long and eventful summer of media art with many international encounters within the walls of our city.”
Lord Mayor Frank Mentrup
The light art installation Globenbogen (Arch of Globes) is part of the Silk Road series, which refers to the historic route of trade and cultural connections between the countries of the entire Eurasian continent. The series began in 2011 with the installation Gate to the East at the Alte Schlachhof Creative Park in the eastern part of the city. In 2013, the installation was on display at the Tokushima Light Art Triennale in Japan; in 2015 it hung above the water basin at the Badisches Staatstheater at the celebrations of the 300th anniversary of the city of Karlsruhe; and in 2017 it was on show above the main entrance to Vienna’s Main Station. In 2019, Kehres created another large light sculpture for the edition of the ZKM exhibition Open Codes in Mumbai, India, which was also presented at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival. “For reasons of applied dialectics, all the globes hang upside down. With the Global South ‘up’, the perspectives of the proverbial worldview change,” states the artist Rainer Kehres.
Media Art Is Here
Under the title Media Art Is Here, the city regularly enables contemporary art projects in public spaces, which are open to everyone. “Since 2019, more than 60 works of media and light art have been presented here in Karlsruhe”, says Dominika Szope, Head of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and adds, “We live in challenging times. Kehres’ Globenbogen in the sense of a parable is a contemporary, artistic comment on the current state of our world, while at the same time it signals there is ‘light at the end of the tunnel’”.
In addition to Rainer Kehres’ work, the interactive light installation Color the World by Nikolai Stefansky, Pascal Wagner, and Lars Wolf is on show in the northern part of the Karlstrasse until October 28, 2022.
For further information visit: www.cityofmediaarts.de
Press contact
City of Karlsruhe I Department of Cultural Affairs
Anastasia Ziegler
Phone +49 (0) 721 133-4002
anastasia.ziegler@kultur.karlsruhe.de
