Tzaphone
Tzaphon ( Hebrew צפון) or Zafou ( Zafu , Japanese座 蒲) is the name of a sculpture by the sculptor Dani Karavan at the entrance to the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament building in Düsseldorf .
history
The state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia , as the owner of the state parliament building, was obliged from the outset to give space to art in architecture . In 1990, two years after the state parliament building was completed, the sculpture Tzaphon , commissioned in 1988, was erected. In the oeuvre of the Israeli artist Karavan, who has been producing wall reliefs and spacious, architecture- related environments since the 1960s , the object, which was originally also planned as a water art object and fountain sculpture , is a major work.
description
The sculpture is a circular disc made of cast iron with a diameter of 15 meters and a weight of around 20 tons. At the Landtag square , the forecourt of the Landtag building at the southern end of the Rheinuferpromenade , which was completed in 1995 , it is set diagonally into the paved floor. A layer of rust covers parts of the object, which is dark brown to rust-red in color. The disc, the surface of which is at the level of the pavement, rises in the direction of the building. The disc is split in the middle. Two track rails are inserted into the gap flush with the surface of the disc . The rails that end at the highest and lowest points of the inclined disk face north . The channel between the rails was planned as a channel for a water trickle running from north to south . In another channel that surrounds the disc outside, the water should disappear into the ground. The original plan was for the water to be heated in a chamber in the concrete foundation underneath the sculpture in winter so that steam would have risen in the gully in colder weather. This was not implemented for technical or security reasons.
reception
Karavan is an artist who develops complex relationships in his work. Ambiguous possibilities of interpretation that arise from these references, which in this case can also be understood as references to various political functions of a parliament , are intended by the artist.
With the circle , the basic geometric shape of the sculpture, he made a formal reference to the architecture of the state parliament building, which represents a structuralist play with circular shapes. The basic shape of the circle, which can be found as the avant-garde of subsequent parliamentary buildings in Germany (for example in the circular arrangement of the seats in the new plenary hall of the Bonn Bundestag ) in the plenary hall of the state parliament, is understood as a symbol of democracy . The gap or channel running in the middle of the disc, which is marked by the railroad tracks, forms in this context of meaning the mathematical line on which parliamentary decisions are made by majorities. The inclined position of the disk, which suggests a tilting and rotating mechanism like that of a gimbal-mounted ship's compass , can be understood in this context as a reference to the political dynamics and sensitivity of a democratic system.
Tzaphon , the title of the work of art, refers to the mountain Ṣāpôn , which in the Bible is associated with the deity Ba'al (Exodus 14, 2–14) and compared with Mount Zion (Psalm 48, 2 f.). In Hebrew, the mountain, which served as a point of reference for navigation in the early seafaring of the Levant , denotes the north direction , which in the Bible is also connoted with the origin of evil (Jeremiah 1:14). The state name North Rhine-Westphalia begins with north . Tzaphon has the same origins as the term Matzpen , which means compass, and Matzpoun , the Hebrew term for consciousness . Zafou , the barely common title of the object, means Zafu and describes the circular Asian seat cushion that is used for sitting meditation .
There are also various possible interpretations of the train tracks, which are the central objective design elements of the otherwise abstract sculpture. They can (like the material cast iron) be interpreted as a reference to the industrial history of the place . On the other hand, they refer to the Holocaust because the mass deportation of European Jews to the extermination camps was carried out via the railroad transport system.
The water that should run in the channel between the railway tracks can be interpreted as a symbol of the Rhine , the most important river in North Rhine-Westphalia, which flows right behind the state parliament building. In the context of the symbolism of the train tracks, however, the water can also mean the life that was destroyed in the Holocaust.
literature
- Karl Ruhrberg : From Florence to Düsseldorf. On the work of the Israeli sculptor Dani Karavan. In: Ingeborg Friebe (Ed.): Encounters. Art in the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia . Dumont Buchverlag, Cologne 1994, p. 20 ff.
Web links
- Stefanie Ippendorf: Zafou , website in the portal duesseldorf.de
- Margot Klütsch: Tzaphon , website in the welt-der-form.net portal
Individual evidence
- ^ Dani Karavan "Tzaphon". In: Carina Gödecke (ed.), Hans Zinnkann et al. (Editor): Art in the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia . Brochure, Düsseldorf 2012, p. 48 (PDF) ( Memento of the original dated August 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Walter Schilling: Origins of ancient Israel . Lit Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-643-11782-3 , p. 113 ( Google Books )
Coordinates: 51 ° 13 ′ 5.3 " N , 6 ° 45 ′ 49.4" E