Balloon – a sculpture for Jean Paul

Garden of the Jean Paul Museum Bayreuth, DE

The 10-meter sculpture was designed as a monument honoring the writer Jean Paul. It conveys the impression of a breeze or of a balloon being inflated with hot air that pulls it upward. The sculpture thus does not seem to burden a pedestal in the traditional way, but to leave the pedestal behind. The dissolution of classical forms – as Jean Paul practiced in literature – is reflected in the sculpture, which does not show a bulging, solid, and symmetrical balloon, but which, as a complex spatial drawing, defines an absent body.
“In the wish to flee the narrow confines of his background and to see the world from a new perspective, Jean Paul invented the figure of the aeronaut Gianozzo, whose balloon is the starting point for the monument. Gianozzo sets off to be able to view the world from above, from a new perspective, thereby finding the extraordinary in the familiar daily life of his homeland.
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