Art is part of human life and therefore at the heart of life. Initially, it may be the magical aesthetic attraction of a painting, a graphic, a photographic work or a sculpture.
But art inevitably changes people and their view of the world when they are surrounded by it on a daily basis. Sometimes there are obvious, more often unconscious messages that the viewer believes to perceive through the work in a virtual dialog with the artist. The stories that the work tells always remain highly personal Ultimately, however, it doesn’t matter, because art is created in the eye of the beholder. And at best, the viewer reflects on it intellectually and relates to it, even if it touches them emotionally first and foremost.
Here you can see a work by the famous German action artist HA Schult-Aqua Picture from the series Action Blue from 2017. It is representative of numerous works by the artist that are shown in the hotel rooms of this hotel.
For Action Blue, HA Schult spent over ten months traveling from Düsseldorf to Beijing in a hybrid vehicle. Along the more than 15,000-kilometer route, he used a simple bucket to scoop water from rivers, lakes, wells and even puddles. He isolated a drop from each sample, magnified it under an electron microscope and made the unique molecular structure visible. This created visual worlds that look like cosmic landscapes – as if the entire universe could be seen in a drop of water.
The theme of water has a special significance for this hotel, as the River Düssel flows directly beneath the building. To make this special feature tangible, each hotel room is furnished with an Aqua Picture and bears the name of the city from which the respective water sample originates. Each picture is complemented by a photo showing the artist drawing water on site. In this way, an artistic thread runs through the entire hotel.
HA Schult, born in 1939, is one of the most important international representatives of action art. With his “Trash People” – life-size sculptures made of garbage – he has caused a sensation worldwide, from the Great Wall of China to the pyramids of Giza. For more than five decades, he has held up a mirror to our consumer society and drawn attention to environmental destruction and globalization.
You can purchase a work from this series exclusively through the Geuer & Geuer Art Foundation: Aqua Picture – Düsseldorf. The multicolored serigraph on laid paper is based on a water sample of the Düssel, was refined with diamond dust, measures 96 by 136 centimeters and was published in a strictly limited edition of only 60 copies – all signed, numbered and dated by hand. Only a few copies are still available, at a price of 1,950 euros.
