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Ad
fontes - Hermann Roemermann, Krefeld, August 2002
„I would simply like to see
the Cologne Cathedral" was the first sentence when we got to know each
other in the West German province in autumn 1988. It has remained in my
memory as an expression of the isolation of living in Stralsund at that
time. We visited the Cologne Cathedral for which we drove, where he had
never been before, into an underground car park – there were no such car
parks in Frank Raendchen's environs due to the nature-given high
groundwater level and lacking necessity.
What followed was lively
correspondence, his letters endowed with black biro and pen-and-ink
drawings which expressed more about the situation of his life than did the
long letter texts. He left the GDR in spring 1989, before the fall of the
wall, and settled a few kilometres further to the west at the Baltic Sea.
I tried to support him in the job he pursued at the time, inscribing
tombstones, and advised him to move to South Germany reasoning this
with the increased devoutness of the population there and thus the greater
expenditure for tombstones.Luckily, and to the great delight of us all in
modern art he did not take this advice.
From then on our exchanges
were primarily of oral nature, and in many an evening talk I had the great
pleasure of observing the development of the artist Frank Raendchen. In
connection with his studies in Kiel a series of free works was created of
which one appears very vividly in my mind's eye: The disparagingly
so-named „Speckschwarte – Bacon Rind". This is a sculpture of about one
metre's height, of Anroechte dolomite, consisting of a three-edged plinth
that brings the natural fissured structure of the rock to light on all
three surfaces, whereby each surface shows differently toned layers of
calcite; covered by a green downy feather of the same massive rock
suggesting a lightness as we know it from 6th century AD Chinese
portrayals of fired-clay dancers.
It was named Bacon Rind
because the curved feather only shows a hint of a polished side on which
the sun is mirrored from time to time. Further works were added which bore
wider or narrower vertical slits. He filled narrower vistas with glass to
achieve astounding light refraction effects. It was surely no coincidence
that he named one of the largest of these sculptures (2.2 m tall) „The
Fount"; it is still on loan by the artist in Klieve, the neighbouring
village to Anroechte. Frank Raendchen's next step was consequent: he sawed
vertically, completely through the rocks and filled the gap with glass.
The result was a series of steles, the attraction of which is to allow the
already mentioned light refraction effects develop – encompassing space
and time.
And then came a memorable
evening – possibly a potato dish was served in the forefront – a shift
from the vertical slits to the insight that there are other possible
courses, too. This broadened the spectrum of the rocks to be handled
tremendously. Among these also the potato or dumpling- like erratic blocks
that can be sawed, split, on which one may impose one's will or uncover
what they conceal. Erratic blocks are the ice-ground boulders from
Scandinavia and the hard rock collected by the ice along the way, which
were transported to the site where they are found today during the ice
ages. The site furthest to the south-west of the Nordic erratic blocks is
appropriately enough the place of the said evening: Krefeld in the
Rhineland.
As from that evening on the
joint discussions no longer dealt with such profane matters as those of
coming to terms with daily problems, but with such that are concrete as
are the features of the Scandinavian primary rocks, these are:
- Hardness
- Brittleness
- Tenacity
- Crystal size
- Cleavage
- Cleavage properties depending on direction
- Roughness of the cleavage surfaces
- Weathering resistance
The mineral structure and the age of the rocks was of little interest for
Frank Raendchen; even the colour in the worked and exposed condition was,
ultimately seen, of no importance. In summary it was the outer shape,
workability and lasting features that counted with a view to the artistic
exploitation possibilities.The outward shape of these erratic rocks
naturally calls up certain associations: sphere, dumpling, potato.The
spherical shape is the exception; a dumpling, no matter whether Thuringian
or Bohemian, does not maintain its shape for a long time, he therefore
landed with the potato as the ideal material for the production of his
temporary erratic rock maquettes. An intuition of the desired splitting –
naturally very theoretically – was hinted at with the help of the knife
applied to the potato. What remained was only for the very heterogeneous
rock to comply, which it did
Hardly anyone else has Frank
Raendchen's precisely trained eye for how an erratic rock – usually
granite or gneiss – can be split, in which direction and at which spacing.
From then on it was all about the search for the heart and soul of the
rock. This then concerns sounding out the centre of the erratic blocks of
Scandinavian rock previously worked on and ground by the ice itself and by
other rock pieces carried along in the ice; and means the well-thought
about splitting the bolder several times and placing of gaps until the
harmonious optical centre of a bolder becomes visible – and indeed not
only the physical centre of gravity.
It may remain unanswered as to
whether the creaking and grinding sound of the rock splitting, as
documented in video cuts, really reproduces the torment of the dumpling
thus chopped up. The fact is that Frank Raendchen – no matter what
geologists and soil scientists had found out – proved long before that
life is found in the very depths of these stones.
He used magnet resonance
tomography for the examinations. We know today that the finest mycelial
threads with a diameter of less than one tenth that of our hair pass
through these rocks with the ability of leading valuable trace elements to
the plants in symbiosis with the weathering of the rocks concerned. So
there is truly life within the rocks. As from the mid-nineties he
surprised us with a new concept of the old dumplings: He sawed them
several times in the horizontal and again filled the gaps with glass. The
massive heavy rocks began to hover and float in the light. I myself
suddenly saw old-crystalline continents floating to new shores – Alfred
Wegener's continental drift in modern style. It was therefore consistent
for him to saw up bricks, too and to compensate losses from the off-cut
with glass. As from then on bricks have also been dancing in the sunlight.
I have imparted the title Ad
fontes to this article, i.e. to the sources, there where purity and
clarity are at their height. What was meant with this proclamation in
antiquity was the search in vain for the source of the Nil and which
persisted into the 20th century. By the way, the Nil also crops up in the
biography of Frank Raendchen: He has already exhibited in Cairo and he has
worked together with Egyptian stonemasons in Aswan and surprised these
craftsmen bursting with tradition with central European techniques of
splitting rocks. In this artist I, however see, in a transferred sense, a
consequent path towards the pure source: After the gloom of earlier
drawings, he expresses clarity in his latest works, and the
rock-glass-combinations that he has hovering by making use of transparent
rays, show light and weightlessness.
Sometimes Frank intimates that
art is absolutely dispensable for those who find their personal fulfilment
in a fitness studio. His works appeal to other people and he does not pick
people up where they are standing (or sleeping) at a certain moment. On
the contrary, he gives us the opportunity to force ourselves to think.
This definitely does not make him a member of those wanting to enhance the
fun society. It is just for this reason that occupying oneself with his
works is such fun. |
