In the middle of nowhere. Alicia Chillida

The exhibition at the Palacio de Cristal in Madrid marks both the beginning of Ulrich Rückriem's relationship with Spain and the starting point of the project in the Aragonese Pre-Pyrenees. In both cases, standing stones or stelae have been the central theme of his work. It all started after a conversation with Rückriem where I shared his fantasy of creating a large-scale work, in the limits of a landscape. That day a sketch emerged with the foreground in a cross plan; the stone core remains in Huesca's work, in relation to an existing forest.

The idea of working outside the limits of an exhibition space, in a work inscribed in the landscape scale, on the largest possible territory, was a necessary challenge. The symbolism around the Camino de Santiago, associated with the idea of an initiatory journey through the North of Spain, constituted the initial reference point for the project. Huesca offered the great extension of its territory and the strong contrasts of its landscape that, together with the low demographic index of the province, gave us great freedom when choosing an enclave.

The Pyrenees mountains form the border between France and Spain. The concept of entre attracted Rückriem from the beginning, his work moves in this territory: that of fragmentation turned into the generating principle of sculpture, the resistance of his work to be reduced to a concrete category, the situation of his work halfway between sculpture and architecture, between the refined and the primitive, between geometry and chance.

In July 1994, we started a journey from west to east through the active valleys that suffer the erosion of the Pyrenees. At an altitude ranging between 700 and 1,500 m. is the Serrablo valley. In its origins they were lands of mark, of border, intermediate between Aragon and Sobrarbe, between Moors and Christians, and they still constitute a surprising identity thanks to a group of small Mozarabic churches of the XIth century that populate this wild and stony place. Among them, San Juan de Busa, of which not the slightest documentary trace can be found, is the only example of the Serrablès isolated from a village and remains in its original state. A rectangular plant of twelve meters by six, built with stone ashlars, in whose interior we find a strange set of double columns attached to the wall and supported by a large plinth that runs around the perimeter of the nave.

However, Rückriem wanted to use the mountains as a background and reference, he needed to flee from their proximity. Therefore we descend to an altitude of 600 m. to the southeast, to the foothills of the Sierra de Guara, where we find villages hidden among the folds of the landscape, gentle valleys that tend towards the horizontal, cultivated slopes in terraces, scattered oaks. The vegetation emulates the Mediterranean forest: cereals, almond, vine and olive trees. Climbing a small pass, at km. 8 of the road that connects Abiego with Peraltilla, a Cañada Real, a cattle trail that is part of the network that runs through the Iberian Peninsula from north to south. Next to it grows an extensive forest of almond trees perfectly aligned. Behind it, forming a belvedere, there is a gently sloping plane from which a large area of the territory can be seen. This was the place chosen by Rückriem to locate his work.

During a long trip we visited some quarries in Extremadura, Portugal and Galicia in search of a granite that offered the necessary qualities. The pink of Porriño, of warm gray color and medium grain, was the chosen stone. Only one quarry offered extraction in large blocks and could execute the cutting laws dictated by the artist, applying the traditional method of cutting with an iron wedge and hammer. Stone is the material with which Rückriem centers his dialogue and through drawing he elaborates a broad conceptual exercise on structure, proportion, rupture, division and treatment of surfaces; the quarry is at the same time his stimulus and his itinerant study around the world.

The field of stelae appears in front of the forest: 20 columns of 3.50 x 1 x 1 x 1 m. arranged in a grid of 20 m. on each side and ordered by a combinatory law of infinite possibilities that prevents the crossing of their axes. The composition responds to a strict geometric order. Each stele is cut horizontally in three parts and placed back in its original position, the fine lines that separate them are the traces of a process that can be clearly read on the surface. The artist describes the process in this way:

Twenty granite blocks extracted from the quarry, cut with a wedge to a precise size: 3.50 x 1 x 1 m. Divided into three parts and placed back in their original position, sunk into the ground up to their first horizontal fissure.

Later, and as a sign from the city to connect with the group of stelae in the countryside, Rückriem decided to place a single stele in the Miguel Servet Park, within the city of Huesca, now moved to the CDAN. Center of Art and Nature. Worked with the same procedure and size as the Abiego group, it varies in the complexity of its internal drawing, in reference to the architecture that surrounds it. The work requires to move, to make a tour to understand it in its totality.

In the Abiego group, as we approach, the volume with respect to us and the relationship between them varies, the columns open up, they move further away from each other; when we enter, the space has been transformed into an interior, it is welcoming. As we move away, the group of stelae closes, to the point that from the eastern field we can see how they become a continuous wall, a single piece in contact with the landscape, a plinth that supports the horizon.

(Excerpt from the catalog, ed. Ostfildern-Ruit: Cantz, 1999).