Werner Mally has always been fascinated by the small gallery in the Michaelskirche in Ottobrunn. “I wanted to go up there, this place fascinated me because it doesn’t reveal what it’s actually for,” says the sculptor from Munich. You can at least mentally climb the gallery until October 28, because Mally has created an access. His wooden “fire escape” leads from a trunk lying on the ground with segments of different sizes up to the gallery. She embraces the defiant exposed concrete block, a strand penetrates the gap from which singers could look. Another strand of ladders leads from the roof of the gallery straight to the high window in the corner of the altar wall, “claws tight, reaches further, the steps narrow, the room seems even higher,” as Mally says.
The internationally renowned cellist Jost Henrich Hecker is inspired by this drama to perform a sound on Sunday, July 10 at 7 p.m. Hecker is a longtime member of the Modern String Quartet and a good friend of Mally’s. He spontaneously agreed to improvise to the fire escape and has also written a composition from the tones echae-ais, which – partly read with Italian tone markings – results in the word Mi-CHAEL(a)i and with a tritone that is considered enigmatic perceived three-tone interval, ends.
Like Mally, Hecker then faces the discussion with the audience. “I’m very curious how people experience the installation,” says Mally, and you can feel how he dealt with the church building by the architect Theodor Steinhauser from Gräfelfing and its unusual gallery: “The parapet is so high that no one can stand it see who is standing on it; it is also only accessible from the outside,” explains the 67-year-old.
The Munich sculptor opens up this “magical” gallery for him with his filigree “fire escape”, which he devised for the Kunsthalle in Schweinfurt in 2015 and which took up the entire room height of the former swimming pool. In the Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche in Giesing it hung from the organ loft to the floor and in Ottobrunn it again reaches from the floor to the high window. The stile and rungs are carved from a single trunk. Mally cored each board several times and cut up to 20 pieces out of it. A self-contained system is formed. You can “walk” it from top to bottom or from bottom to top, both directions result in their own picture. Associations such as chain, line of life, uncertain path arise. Visitors to the sound performance can also talk to the art advisor of the Evangelical Church, Helmut Braun, and Dean Mathis Steinbauer about the readings next Sunday.
Information on the work and accompanying program at www.michaelskirche.deopen daily from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Ganghoferstrasse 26.