Der Sanitätsraum / Samaritain

Like the artists Thomas Huber and Anton Henning, Maria Nordman has designed a functional space within the station building. For her Sanitätsraum/Samaritain (Emergency Room/Samaritan) she occupies three rooms underneath the southern staircase of the Bahnhof Rolandseck. The mammoth tree, the sequoia, outside the museum also forms part of the artwork.

The middle room is decorated entirely in white. Here the floor and the walls appear to be without contours and edges and to merge into each other. Visitors are invited to allow themselves to be enveloped by this expanse of "nothingness".

Viewers are transported into a silent act of perception: they can feel the individual rooms but also the links to the outer space, to the sequoia, to the Rhine and to the opposite bank of the river. The people who come to the museum and work in the vicinity also form part of the artwork.

The two side rooms contain two sculptures of wood and steel. These can be positioned on the forecourt, for example to prompt conversations between visitors. In this way the public has the opportunity to perceive and examine the sculptures in a new way.

Maria Nordman was born in Görlitz in 1943. She lives and works in Los Angeles, USA, in Europe and in the cities in which her location-specific installations are to be found.

Since the 1960s the artist's work has brought conversations about art out of museums and into the public space. For Maria Nordman, art can take place anywhere and at any time.