2023

auf Anfrage zugänglich

Neubau Grundschule Aidenbachstraße mit Sporthalle und Haus für Kinder, Aidenbachstraße 23, 81379 München

2 Glasmosaike im Innen- und Außenbereich, insgesamt 110 m² (innen: 30 m², außen 80 m²). Gefertigt von der Firma Trend in Vicenza und produziert in Italien. 275.000 Mosaiksteine insgesamt, Steingröße 2 x 2 cm. Die Sterne sind mit Steinen aus Weißgold gehöht.

Architecture: djb Architekten, München

Landscape architecture: Lex Kerfers Landschaftsarchitekten, Bockhorn

Photos: Henning Koepke

Text: Matthias Mühling

A brilliant blue night sky shines in the form of a large mosaic on the wall of the auditorium in the new school on Aidenbachstrasse. Die Erforschung der Sternenwelt (2023) by Claudia Plank and Hans Werner Poschauko is made of countless 2 x 2-cm mosaic tiles. Seen from up close, they look like the color pixels of a digital image whose content can only be discerned from a distance. The mural can be seen from every corner of the two-story auditorium, creating a spatial reference point. Individual constellations are highlighted in lines. The oversized woodpecker sitting in the lower right of the picture seems to gaze into the endless, starry sky. Its black-and-white patterned feathers and bright red head stand out clearly from the rest of the luminous blue background. It is a so-called middle spotted woodpecker, a type of European woodpecker whose two genders look almost identical; it is mainly found in coppices and semi-natural forests.

For their design, the two artists referenced nineteenth-century textbooks. The starry sky can be traced back to pictures from the Bilderatlas der Sternenwelt (Visual Atlas of the Astral World) written by the Austrian astronomer Edmund Weiß in 1888, while illustrations in Schuberts Naturgeschichte des Tierreichs für Schule und Haus (Schubert’s Natural History of the Animal Kingdom for School and Home) (1886) served as models for the woodpecker. With their choice of motif, the two artists juxtapose the dimensions of the incomprehensible macrocosm of the universe with the microcosm of the tangible human sphere and environment. This opens up an overarching space for free association around the questions, themes, and experiential spheres that the children encounter in their daily lessons. At the same time, the mosaic alludes to issues relating to the complexity and fragility of our human existence and the natural world around us, as well as to our responsibility for our planet. The long wall outside the school also features a mosaic with the same starry sky motif.

The Austrian artists Claudia Plank (*1969) and Hans Werner Poschauko (*1963) have worked together for more than thirty years. Most of their work directly opposes the destruction of nature and culture triggered by the consequences of our consumer society. Their themes often revolve around the mysteries of our world; they describe themselves as “representatives of a contemporary romanticism.” Plank and Poschauko studied under Maria Lassnig and Ernst Caramelle at the University of Applied Arts and then later under Guillaume Bijl, Mona Hatoum, Jimmie Durham, and Jean Fisher in a post-graduate program at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. Plank and Poschauko live in Vienna. Their works are distinguished by a conceptual, poetic approach that finds expression in such diverse media as installation, performance, video, painting, and sculpture. The duo has created many works of art for public spaces to date.