11/07/22 Your cyclist on the eastern bridgehead of the Marko-Feingold-Steg in Salzburg is a flyweight against the work of art that stands in Hamburg in front of the Elb-Philharmonie. The bronze coffee bean by Lotte Ranft weighs three tons. She stands on the Coffee Plaza in Hamburg’s HafenCity.
By Reinhard Kriechbaum
When Lotte Ranft was commissioned in 2006 to create a large sculpture for the square in Hamburg’s new HafenCity, one could justifiably say: Not the bean! Because there were no buildings there, the future location of the sculpture was still a barren and empty sandbank. The buildings designed by the New York star architect Richard Meier, which were supposed to frame the large square, only existed on paper at the time.
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This much was clear to Lotte Ranft: She wanted to contrast the vertical and orthogonal grid of future architecture with an organic form. So the (coffee) bean after all: “Its oval shape is sensual, with its proportions, curvatures, divisions and surfaces full of tension.”
Why is this giant bean – to be precise: two halves of a bean five meters high – a topic for the Salzburg Museum right now? Because the exhibition is there Café Salzburg runs. The coffee is politically somewhat incorrectly described as a “Turkish drink” in a canon that has found its way into many songbooks. However, the “Turkish drink” does not come to us via the Balkan route, but mostly from the north: Hamburg is the city where the most coffee is handled and processed – that was Lotte Ranft’s starting point for the giant bean.
The project coffee bean by Lotte Ranft will be presented in the presence of the artist on Tuesday (12.7.) at 10.30 a.m presented in the Salzburg Museum – Registration This email address is being protected from spambots. To display JavaScript must be turned on!
The Café Salzburg exhibition can be seen until September 4th – www.salzburgmuseum.at
Images: Salzburg Museum
For the exhibition discussion
Hey, how sweet does the coffee taste
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