Art for Architecture in the foyer of the Thünen Institute of Fisheries Ecology and Sea Fisheries in Bremerhaven.

When one enters the foyer of the Thünen Institute in Bremerhaven, the first thing one notices are the silvery, shining objects spaced around the walls in an airy constellation. They are conglomerates of textures and surfaces in varying sizes. On the one hand, they look like medallion-like reliefs with their rounded outlines; on the other, they are reminiscent of rock formations with their sculpted surfaces which protrude into the room's space. In the dark, their contours begin to shine mysteriously in an intense green or blue.

Gabriele Obermaier won the competition Art for Architecture for the foyer of the Thünen Institute in 2017. The new building for the departments Sea Fisheries and Fisheries Ecology combines a laboratory and offices and was opened in the summer of 2018. The Thünen Institute in Bremerhaven is a federal research institute and is a consultant to the federal government with regard to concepts for a sustainable but also competitive exploitation of the natural resources of the sea.

Seen from an architectural standpoint, the foyer is a minimalist entrance space flooded with light from the two glazed facades. The space offers a choice of two different directions for those entering. One leads through a large passage straight into the interior of the institute, towards the fish-breeding station; the other leads to a staircase to the upper storey along the left-hand wall. The height of the space feels cool and light as the walls with their openings hardly seem to be bearing any weight. The challenging task of the competition was to develop a work of art that corresponds to the architectural situation of the reception hall as well as to the important scientific subject of the ocean.

Gabriele Obermaier decided to use the walls for the art in order not to interfere with the lines of sight and movement. She also wanted the materials used in the work to harmonize with the formal and conceptual parameters of the space. Those entering should be confronted with the institute's fascinating object of research. This because what we consider a completely researched world still remains largely invisible to the human eye. The reliefs, in an alien but familiar guise, are designed to make this unknown world visible for a moment of consciousness.

While she was researching the ocean environment, the artist was particularly interested in the undiscovered world: the deep sea. Approximately 70 percent of the world's surface is 3,600 metres deep under the sea, on average, and therefore difficult to access even for the most modern methods of research. No sunlight reaches here; the temperatures are freezing; and the pressure is enormous. However, life has developed here and ensures its survival with amazing methods. Gabriele Obermaier developed her concept using some of these biologically researched life-strategies of marine creatures in their environments in and close to water. Among these are camouflage and hiding as well as illusion and luring by means of bioluminescence, the ability to create light autonomously. The artist modelled formations that seem like real imprints of geological or biological materials. The altogether nine more or less rounded clusters are of different sizes and are reminiscent of pressed sand, cooling lava flows, mussel beds, or coral reefs, stone sediment or lugworm mounds. Structures like these allow the creatures to disappear from the surface to protect themselves.

The objects are cast in aluminium, which results in a polished silvery surface. Indicative of the mysterious and hidden life in these glimmering structures are the areas tinted with photoluminescent paint underneath the surfaces and around the edges of the reliefs. The objects are mounted approximately three centimetres from the walls and friezes so that the coloured contours and drawing have the effect of aureoles. In the case of sudden darkness, the colour effect intensifies and an unreal luminescence in green and blue shades appears. This photoluminescence can be admired for about half an hour. Remarkable is the alternating interdependency of light and darkness, as without light there would be no charging of the colour when the electrons are brought to a higher energy level in the excitation centres; and without darkness there would be no visible effect of the coloured luminescence - a discharging process of the electrons reverting to their ground state. Regarded metaphorically, this magical appearance of the unknown is therefore existentially connected with the light of the factual.

The structures are made in an amazingly delicate and natural manner. Gabriele Obermaier experimented with different malleable materials and approaches in order to obtain the respective desired effects as exactly as possible. The viewers will not be able to avoid the question of whether these objects have been sculpted by human hand or if they are a special sort of ready-made objects from nature, imprints like fossils that are witness to genuine reality.

This indeterminability seems to have been the artist's goal - containing as it does elementary questions pertaining to art. To what extent can a person touch the origin of something if this remains invisible? Christianity, for example, saw itself continually confronted with this topic with regard to the depictability of God. It attempted to absolve itself by forbidding images but repeatedly circumvented and softened this edict itself. This is proven by ecclesiastical and art history. The Veil (or Sudarium) of Veronica was not only a valuable relic due to the real imprint of Jesus' face, it also became a subject of painting, which legitimised the depiction of the Son of God as a true image (vera icon).

Paul Valéry also comes to speak of this indeterminability in his dialogue Eupalinos or the Architect: Socrates and Phaidros meet one another in Hades. The expected bliss of sojourning in the world of souls and liberated from the burden of the body, however, is lacking. In their conversation, it becomes clear that only human mortality makes it possible to feel joy, meaning joy in the face of the appearances that are "ambigu" – ambiguous, or simply remain indeterminable. The mysterious shape of a hand-sized object from the sea serves as an example. Did the wind and the waves shape it or was it made by human hand? For Paul Valéry, the idea that objects from nature and art are to be considered in an analogous way is decisive. Not with regard to their origins and meaningful objective behind their creation but rather with regard to the occurrence of their multifaceted appearance

As they are mounted on various walls and at varying heights, the reliefs correspond to each other and take into account the possible directions of sight and movement of the visitors. Depending on where one is standing in the foyer, a different relief or other relief constellation is the focus of the gaze. Gabriele Obermaier deliberately does without specific names for the individual parts of the series that she titles UWO (Under Water Objects) and just numbers them from 1 to 9. The artist is not concerned with stimulating recognition or allocation of the depicted structures. Rather, in this wondering, the unexpected and hidden should become present and able to be experienced aesthetically – a subtle bridging between science and art.

Katrin Dillkofer