New art at the TAO building

What was your personal path to art like?

Like many people, I have been painting and crafting with enthusiasm since I was a child. While attending secondary school, I developed a very close relationship with art. At that time, however, studying art was not something I had in mind. Looking back, my diversions by way of a skilled craft were far too long yet finally led to my studying art in Weimar – a huge enrichment and the start of my second life, which also includes my wife, artist Maria Vill, with whom I work together as a team.

What kinds of materials do you most like to work with – and why?

There is a certain predilection for metal due to the seemingly unlimited constructive possibilities, the connotation with technology, the haptic and optical qualities. And: I am very familiar with the material properties and the resulting possibilities.

In our conceptual approach, however, we do not allow ourselves to be confined by a restriction to any one material. For the production of most of the objects, we work together with specialized companies, which gives us more freedom of choice with regard to materials and techniques. For the artwork for the TAO building, this was Kratzer Metallbau in Zittau – with whom we had worked several times before.

How do you approach new designs?

Public spaces are not like a museum that invites you to step through a picture frame into a closed world. Our art is encountered in everyday situations. The art outside must be quickly understood by the passerby. Through the relationship to the place and the context, in terms of content and form, we create an ensemble of art, space, place, situation, etc. that can be experienced with all the senses.

For this purpose, we explore the place, its function and meaning. Of course, we also investigate the spatial as well as the architectural qualities. In this research phase, initial visions free from feasibility emerge, which are subsequently – we toss the balls back and forth – made more concrete.

How did your design for the TAO building come about?

The design for the TAO building was also created in this way. As an exception, we did submit separate proposals for the competition in this case.

What is your idea behind the artwork and how can the installation be approached as a "visitor"?

The sculpture, technically constructed according to a natural model, is reminiscent of blades of grass swaying in the wind – stable and mobile, rooted in the earth, growing towards the sun, small and yet of the utmost importance for life on our planet.

It allows for many different interpretations: linking to the subject areas of materials science and materials technology, it alludes to the role of nature as an inspiration and model for science and research. 

David Mannstein

The artist David Mannstein was born in Bad Hersfeld in 1958 and grew up in Fulda. After various attempts to complete his studies and after receiving a master craftsman's diploma, he studied fine arts in Weimar, where he met artist Maria Vill, with whom he works together as the artist duo Mannstein + Vill. They live in Berlin and work almost exclusively in public spaces. In addition to permanent installations, they also intervene temporarily - preferring to do so in the form of paste-ups with which they design façades.