Crack and Warp Column 37

As part of “Blickachsen 8 RheinMain” various works by David Nash – offering an insight into the range of his creative output – are on display in the main church and in front of the Kunsthalle in Darmstadt. For Nash a dialogue with nature is always the starting point for his designs. He works mainly with wood, and even his bronze and iron casts are developed out of work in wood. He uses wood that is either dead or already felled. The point of departure is always a consideration of their particular quality – their structure, their age and colour, their plasticity, their resistance to being worked, and their vulnerabilities. Using a chain-saw or simple tools he elicits from the wood its intrinsic inner structures, incorporating the on-going metamorphosis of the natural material into his work. From massive tree trunks Nash liberates not only the basic geometric forms of cube, sphere or pyramid, but also archetypes such as a boat, throne or cross, and natural forms such as an egg, a spiral or a seed. Through serial structural incisions he fans out a massive block of wood like a concertina, or transforms heavy tree trunks into filigree columns or egg shapes, turning in spirals, as if covered in scales or seemingly rolled-up. David Nash became well-known above all for his works in which the wood surface is either wholly or partly charred. Here also, the principle of metamorphosis is carried over into his art: through the charring Nash precipitates a transition of the material from the organic into the mineral. The charred form seems condensed; one’s attention is directed away from the material, towards its shape. In the city church of Darmstadt four impressive examples of Nash’s method of working are on display: “Crack and Warp Column”, “Red and Black Dome”, “Red Throne” and “Stack”. Under the late-Gothic ribbed vault of the choir of the church and in the historic tower hall, Nash’s sculptures enter into a tense dialogue with the ensemble of statues in the church – particularly with the dominating epitaph, erected by Landgrave George I in 1587 for his late wife Magdalena, and which shows the couple life-size.