Lüpertz on the Rhine Promenade

Monheim am Rhein. Markus Lüpertz’s “Leda” is here! The monumental contemporary interpretation of the legendary figure “Gänseliesel”, which is a coat-of-arms motif and an important landmark of the city of Monheim, was ceremoniously unveiled on September 21, 2019, on the banks of the Rhine directly beneath the landscape balcony. Standing on a 7.50 m-high plinth, the 3.60 m painted bronze sculpture forms an imposing landmark on the riverside promenade, visible from afar. At the same time as Leda was unveiled, a retrospective exhibition opened in the halls opposite of the future K714 cultural refinery. It will be on view until October 31, 2019, and documents the creative process from the Monheim Gänseliesel to Markus Lüpertz’s sculpture “Leda”. The successful staging of the exhibits in the listed former Shell hall was decisively supported by AMECKO, the exhibition stand builder from Oberhausen.

Commissioned by Monheimer Kulturwerke, AMECKO took on the conceptualization, planning, and implementation of the presentation areas for the drawings and designs, which the exhibition shows alongside other stages in the artwork’s development, for example in the form of plaster models and woodcuts. “A particular challenge was that it is a listed building. That means we had to build the walls for hanging the pictures as freestanding structures, taking structural calculations into account,” reports Klaus Zittrich, Managing Director of AMECKO GmbH.
The stand builders refrained from using mechanical connections with steel clamps in order not to damage either columns or walls of the historic reinforced-concrete structure of the former Shell barrel-filling hall. “This also means we can dismantle everything again without leaving any residue,” emphasizes Klaus Zittrich.

A total of around 150 meters of wall length was constructed with a wooden substructure, clad with panels and crack-bridging filler, then wallpapered with cotton wallpaper and painted white. At the rear, the 5 m-high wall structure was secured with 1,000-liter water tanks as ballast.
For the implementation of the precisely fitting presentation areas for the listed building, the exhibition professionals from Oberhausen had only a few weeks’ time. “Thanks to the smooth cooperation with Monheimer Kulturwerke, we were able to help realize Markus Lüpertz’s retrospective at this beautiful, historically significant and forward-looking location on time and successfully,” summarizes the AMECKO Managing Director.

A personal highlight of the exhibition “Markus Lüpertz – Leda” for the AMECKO team is the poem on a central stele in the entrance area that Markus Lüpertz left to welcome visitors. “Through the artist’s poem, the exhibition construction itself was, in a way, elevated to art. For us, the Lüpertz retrospective is a fantastic opening for the future K714 cultural refinery, which the hall on the former Shell site will be transformed into,” says Klaus Zittrich. “A venue complex for up to 4,000 concertgoers is being created—a modern place of culture that continues to reveal the outline of the original listed building and thus builds a bridge to history—somewhat like Markus Lüpertz’s contemporary depiction of Monheim’s old landmark, the Gänseliesel.”