what is inside, is outside

Zenit

"Land Registry and Colourlightsail" Barbara Beisinghoff planned the project „Art in Place“ for Dreieich with Adele Beisinghoff. Barbara Beisinghoff won the tender of the district of Offenbach and the Savings Bank of Langen-Seligenstadt for the decoration and arrangement of the area around the town hall in May, 2005. She created copper reliefs in the pavement, colour glass sails for the roof and a translucent yellow window for the entrance hall. Her project stands under the motto „Denn was innen ist, das ist außen.“ from J.W. von Goethe´s poem “Epirrhema”.

“Nothing is inside, nothing is outside, since what is inside, is outside. Enjoy true appearance, enjoy the earnest game, nothing alive is one thing alone, it is also many things (together).”

The yellow watermark picture at the window shines within the foyer. The central eye sticks out in this yellow cosmos. The eye depends on the light, because “no light, no sight”. In the floor in front of the main entrance the Dreieichenhain land "registry page" is scratched into the first of five copper plates, each of which measures 200 by 100 cm, that had been painted over with asphalt gloss paint, in which not only the names of 250 children from Dreieich have been preserved in the form of a relief for treading on; the children made drawings of what they like most in their town.

Here you find an etched poem by Hanne Juritz: “Shadow
I was a child, the shadow I wanted to catch,
my own shadow fell in behind me,
it laid itself down beside me,
it rested in front of me.
I heard my mother say:
if nothing in the world belongs to you,
you can still be sure to own your own shadow.”

On the square in front of the colonnade you find the Götzenhain page from the Land Registry – with eleven suns on it. The Sprendlingen page of the Land Registry at the start of the glass colonnade is full to overflowing with rich and varied life “Nothing alive is one thing alone, it is always many things together”. Three glass color-light-sails have been inserted into the glass ceiling of the colonnade and cast reflections and shadows on the floor and the facade, when the sun shines. The glass painting was carried out in cooperation with Elisabeth Schillings from the glass painting firm of the same name in Frankfurt. The red-colored light-sail in the northern colonnade shows in its lower half a blue-yellow-red square with small golden squares, a symbol for the cosmic order. The four stands for the seasons, the points of the compass, the elements and the evangelists. Gold is the most precious of all colors, a symbol of the sun. The second colored light-sail is situated where the glass ceiling crosses in front of the town hall´s through passage (corridor?). Goethe`s verse is “copied” into it; “Were the eye not sunlike, how could we see the light?”

As far as Goethe is concerned, only identical entities can recognize their counterparts. The basis for the knowledge of God lies in being made in God`s image. There is “nothing except us that is not at the same time in us”, he wrote in 1827 about his Theory of Color. In the floor underneath you find the Buchschlag Land Registry page with the Rudolf Binding motto for a sundial. The poet Rudolf Binding was the first ever mayor of Buchschlag from 1913 till the First World War:
“The day travels over my face / the night feels its way quietly along / and day and night hang in balance/ and night and day are all one.”

The Offenthal Land Registry page is at the south end of the glass colonnade. The children have scratched on this plate while standing, so that the motifs are visible from the front. This results in a different perspective from those of the other plates with their panoramic motifs. The third blue coloured paint sail quotes Goethe´s genius: “When during the day zenith and distance, blue flows into inmeasurable.”

We wish this town hall that Goethe´s “genius” holds its hand over it, so that it may enjoy a future as a “genius loci”, as a place both inspired and inspiring, that something alive in Goethe`s sense may grow. The artist has together with the children laid the foundations for all that.

Dr Friederike Schmidt-Möbus