Hannsjörg Voth

In a void separating the Office's buildings on the former site of the Hacker-Pschorr brewery stands a project by Hannsjörg Voth (*1940 Bad Harzburg, DE) that evokes the eternal presence in an urban setting of the forces of nature that are the sun, moon, and water. Voth's art explores the mythological dialogue between man and nature, borrowing forms from archaic cultures and incorporating them into monumental artworks often conceived as just temporary installations to live on only in the writings chronicling their genesis. In Morocco, Voth built three monumental pieces exploring the influence of elemental forces on the development of civilisation. Composed of locally sourced adobe and stone, these projects exemplify his preference for raw materials that blend in with the environment. But unlike Nikolaus Gerhart (*1944 Starnberg, DE), whose work also uses archaic forms to examine the mythological significance of nature for civilised man, Voth's intention is not to contrast with surrounding architecture. In his work "Zwischen Sonnentor und Mondplatz" [Between sun gate and moon court] in Munich we see another example of Voth taking his aesthetic syntax and adapting it to the surrounding culture. At precisely noon the sun's rays travel through the gate, a dark marble ribbon in the ground tracing the sun's path. The artwork links the sun to the moon via a channel of water that ends in a shallow pool featuring an arrangement of objects depicting the phases of the moon. Voth thus offers us a space to linger and stroll right in the middle of the city.