IMMER & EWIG


Kulturkirche Ost,
Cologne Buchforst

The work at the Kulturkirche Ost in Cologne Buchforst reacts to the architecture of Georg Rasch and Winfried Wolski from the 60s by taking up the impressive lighting of the church and in a certain way reversing it.
During the day, the light is directed from the tapered altar area over the diagonal coarse formwork impression, like a halo, from top to bottom into the church interior.
The work IMMER & EWIG writes in this texture of the concrete wall structure lines of text with word pairs of everyday life and sends them in a steady movement back to the altar, the architectural and spiritual “light source” of the room.
These double terms, such as sonic and smoke, bang and brew in the work of Hartung and Trenz, always combined with a & sign, are very common in German. Sometimes they include opposites (heaven and hell), sometimes doublings (ever and ever), sometimes things or people that simply belong together (salt and pepper, hinz and kunz). But almost always they tell short stories, short dramas of human existence. It is not possible to express shorter victory and defeat, euphoria and despair in life.