Artist: Reiner Ruthenbeck
Date: 1969
Technique: Plates
Reiner Ruthenbeck began his art practice as a photographer, documenting artworks and Fluxus performances. At the age of 25, he decided to study painting under Joseph Beuys in Düsseldorf. In 1968, Ruthenbeck’s studies ended; he left behind painting as a medium, concentrating instead on a wide variety of sculptural materials. Ruthenbeck uses natural materials like rubber, felt, glass, metal, wood, paper, and fabric in his works, accentuating their physical properties by drawing together their contrasting elements. Through variations influenced by Arte Povera and Minimalism, he reveals the effects that differences in the size, mass, and geometry of an object have on the formal unity of the sculpture. “Heaps of Ashes V” is a sculpture consisting of a sheet metal structure partially buried inside a pile of ash, rising out of the ash in the shape of a honeycomb. It belongs to a series of nine works grouped together as “Kegel und Haufen” (Cones and Piles) made between 1968 and 1979 and presented in Harald Szeemann’s exhibition “When Attitudes Become Form “in 1969. By using metal plates, Ruthenbeck gives a solid and geometrical form to the heaps of ashes that resist taking a fixed form without the use of a restraining mould. “Heaps of Ashes V” is not just a formal interrogation produced through ordinary, simple materials and interventions; it also carries conceptual and historical connotations. The pile smells of slag, reminiscent of the Ruhr Area (North Rhine-Westphalia) of Germany, which occupies an important place in the country’s recent history, including World War II, as the traditional centre of German industries like coal-mining, metallurgy and chemical production. It is also the birthplace of the artist.
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