Ulrich Rückriem. Alicia Chillida

Ulrich Rückriem (Düsseldorf, 1938), after his training at the stonemasonry school that restored Cologne Cathedral, began working as a sculptor in the 1960s, coinciding with the early Minimal Art with whom he shares the ability to organize space and the rigorous geometry he imposes on stone, as well as the acceptance of the manufacturing process in the production of the work. Rückriem adheres to the concerns of some artists of his generation, such as Carl Andre, Richard Long or Sol Lewitt, whose art is composed of elemental and simple forms, structures that are not mystical, but offer a clear reading of how they are generated and organized. However, his sculpture cannot be reduced to that category. The insistence on respect for the expressive power of the material and the great simplicity in its treatment evoke its symbolic power and imply a profound knowledge of classical sculpture and its relationship with architecture.

The language created by Rückriem introduces a symbolic discourse in postminimalist sculpture. A professor at the Kunst Academie in Hamburg, drawing has always accompanied this stone sculptor. Both media allow him to address one of the central issues of his work: "exploring the inner dimensions of sculpture". Rückriem states that his main conflict is mass and line, and the cut as a fine line dividing matter.

This exhibition, conceived for the Crystal Palace space, site specific is centered on the theme of vertical Stelae-Stones, whose volume accompanies and is directly related to the architecture, to the architectural rhythm of the building and its surroundings. Further away, at a crossroads, appears another sculpture, a large block of blue granite from Vire, which was created for the Documenta in Kassel in 1987 and which participates in the same lexicon or "family" as the group created for this occasion.

The split lines in the stone and the circular holes, traces of the iron wedges used to break it, draw the tension between form and matter, defining the difference between natural form and artistic form. The process of "cutting" reveals the internal structure of the stone, by splitting a block and recomposing it in its original form, the working process becomes visible. Rudi Fuchs alludes to the democratic character of this sculpture, its legibility to the viewer that makes him able to reconstruct the process of its creation.

For an artist whose studio is the quarry, it is essential to have a place for the works to dialogue with each other and for the grammar between them to be explicit. For this reason, Rückriem has industrial spaces - the Clonegal barn is one of them - in which he can contemplate his sculpture in groupings carefully articulated by himself and thus be able to trace their syntax, progression and future evolution.