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DAMASCUS PROJECT
Damascus is described in ancient writings as nothing less than paradise. And just as archetypal,
how paradise nevertheless seems familiar to us, who think we do not know it, is the
primitive structure of this ancient city, which is no longer known in our modern world.
intuitively graspable: as a memory, as a place of longing, as a model and as a wish.
One cannot think of Damascus without projecting.
After a study stay in the Syrian metropolis, the Munich sculptor Nele Ströbel has
developed the project for a spatial work dealing with the highly complex urban organism,
The artist’s work is a phenomenological-artistic exploration of his private, public, and imaginary spaces.
Nele Ströbel thereby opens up the field of tension between the different meanings and
levels of interpretation of a city that is as real and alive as it is mystical, in that it deals with
simultaneous artistic reflections, formed in different media, and
analyses approaches the topic.
Thus, the most tangible, three-dimensional components of the “narrative space,” as Ströbel calls her
Installation project names, 52 terracotta objects, shape and space variations, based on
different folds always of the same surface pattern. From different colored clays
fired and partly provided with contrasting stripes, the variety of the resulting
small spatial structures as astounding as they are illuminating; they invite as spatial signs and gestures
The pictures are an invitation to explore the spatial structure explored by Ströbel.
In addition, in a further step of abstraction, there are four large-format plan drawings on clay paper.
and opera foil. The felt-tip pen drawings, which on the one hand the road network and building outlines,
on the other hand isometrics of individual buildings, grouped around them, become the almost
ornamental plafond of the clay models, beyond that they serve as projection surfaces. In
their, measured against modern city plans, deliberate inaccuracy in dealing with a consistent
cartographic point of view, these drawings stand in contrast to historical plans with their through
the human perception weighted perspective changes and emphasis close. At
the surfaces of these plan drawings, creating a maximum of atmospheric density,
documentary photos of streets, architecture and life in Damascus projected.
About twenty works on paper with further plan drawings deal with special city districts
and lead the viewer deeper into the details. With felt pen and neon afterglow paint
the depicted city squares shine in the semi-darkness of the projection room and the
add another level of the wall that both thematizes and dissolves the surrounding wall.
Acquisition of the city population. As the most immediate reflection of the impressions, the exhibition project
supplemented by numerous hand drawings and photographs with views of the city, which the artist
made during her study visit on site.
In an increasingly globalized world with uniform large cities, confusingly similar to each other
sensually experienceable and tangible (living) space to an ever rarer, human
needs and longings, but also a necessary place of reassurance.
of oneself, counteracting the progressive de-localization and digital isolation of the individual.
Nele Ströbel’s DAMASKUS PROJECT makes it directly tangible how important such places are.
from very immediate experiences such as the touching of an ancient wall to the
to the literary reflections on a human-made, to a kind of second
nature or even an earthly paradise.
Dagmar Schott M.A., art historian, Munich
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