"culture structure"
by Thomas Foehr
 | The artist about his work: I act as a mediator between the existing cultural landscape and the sandstone block. The Moselle valley with its vineyards, the basic form found in the raw block and the typical properties of sandstone are the starting point of my work. The filter of mind and body condenses forms, structures, lines that flow into the stone via the chisel. The sandstone, in its compliant nature, is an easy victim and becomes a hewn, stone "cultural structure". Culture creates forms. If this formative force is lost, landscapes and objects find their way back to an inherent archetype. My sculpture, too, will increasingly shed its imposed structures over the decades, until it finds itself again as just stone. |
The end: Stones by the River by Dr. Baerbel Schulte
Thomas Foehr The "Cultural Structure" stone on the Moselle path between Wincheringen and Wehr is very reminiscent of the landmarks or national emblems of the Middle Ages, which were used to mark a specific point or district. He uses the archaic formal language of ancient stonemasons, similar to what we find in Roman sarcophagi, and with these geometric patterns creates an almost abstract depiction of the Moselle landscape surrounding the stone. Furthermore, the stone's persistence reveals to us that it existed long before us and will exist long after us. It implies an inkling of the coming into being and passing away of human cultural expressions, which can only ever be temporary compared to the natural form.
Biography:
Born in Trier in 1951, apprenticeship and travel years as a sculptor, since 1979 own studio in Trier.
Art Promotion Prize of Rhineland-Palatinate, lectureship at Trier University of Applied Sciences, UNESCO work grant in Venice, art in architecture, among others: Landeszentralbank Kaiserslautern, - Ministry of Finance, Mainz, - LVA Rhineland-Palatinate, Drei Burgen-Klinik in Bad Münster am Stein - Ebernburg; Hunsrückhaus on the Erbeskopf.