“ATTRACTING ATTENTION ON THE TRANSIENCE OF ALL THINGS”

With his project of a sculptural installation on the City Hall facade, Rainer Gross tries above all to « convey a spatial experience and create a visual counterweight to the surrounding architecture ». The artwork's linear structure – composed of blackened slats – takes over a large part of the facade of the building, and its outlines and flexibility evoke some kind of « calligraphy in space ».

Beyond the visual and physical experience, Rainer Gross invites the onlookers to be aware of the signs of change, deterioration, and disappearance present in the place. This black flow, which appears and disappears, does not only evoke transience in the general understanding of the word.

« Temporal continuity, the oppositions between what is fluid and what is immutable, presence and absence, memory and anticipation, are what interest me most and what inspire my creations whenever I work in historic buildings », explains Rainer Gross.

As underlined by its title, L'Endroit et l'Envers* refers more particularly to the city buried underground after World War II, and, therefore to the history of Le Havre.

* The Upside and Downside