Rainer Gross, New York

Rainer Gross has lived and worked for more than 30 years as a freelance artist in New York and his work has been exhibited around the world.

Various versions of organically influenced artistic structures are repre-sented which recall natural phenomena without actually illustrating landscapes or nature. The observer inevitably thinks of pastoral atmos-phere, -seasonal moods, the shapes of nature or geological structures from the core of the earth. The surface structures of Rainer Gross’ art are similar to overlays and deposits in earth layers.

Water sculpture on the Ottoplatz

Rainer Gross names his design DeutzTwins. The work has, so to speak, a Janus-headed appearance. In the direction of the Ottoplatz, the work is a slim stele approximately ten metres high made of finely sanded concrete. The side facing the CologneTriangle shows a classical motif of the artist, i.e. the picture of the twins. In contrast to his paintings, Gross, however, has not placed the DeutzTwins images mirrored next to each other, but set at an angle of 90 degrees. The horizontal half of the picture of the twins serves as the base of the water basin. The vertical twin appears in contrast as a “fixed image” over which a water spray runs. Consequently, both twins – the artist speaks of a folded-out sculpture – are to a certain extent covered with a film of water. Dr. Carl Haenlein, 2005