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Sculpture above the bar of Hotel Le Royal Meridien Hamburg, for the Volksfürsorge Collection, 2003

Client: Volksfürsorge AG


A steel sculpture suspended above the bar on the seventh floor of Hotel Le Royal Meridien Hamburg opposite the front-facing windows (with a view over the Alster lake). Laser-cut stainless steel elements, assembled and highly polished; wooden blocks with intarsia; test tubes; paper ships folded from newspaper.

The motifs reflect the functions of a bar as a place of fleeting communication (paper ships), of business and trade (bottle, wooden cubes), but also of solitude. The various maritime components such as anchors, ships, fish etc. allude in general terms to the standard repertoire of emblems for port cities like Hamburg.

The spatial context only makes itself properly felt in conjunction with the sweeping view through the set of windows over Hamburg’s Alster Lake vis-à-vis. The sculpture provides a spatial counterpoint to this sensational panorama. Yachts, water and sky are mirrored in the sculpture’s polished surface, incorporating the outside world into the object’s overall symbolism.

The object was sold after a renovation in 2016.

Gianlorenzo Bernini: first design for altar baldachin, St. Peter, Rome; ca. 1630