Installation
Sandstone, limestone, binder, linen
As the Alps rose, sediment washed from the mountains into the basin, out of which, 250 million years later, the city of Basel would emerge. The sediment hardened to the greenish sandstone used to build the Basler Münster, but the earth would destroy the cathedral with an earthquake in 1356. It was rebuilt from the ruins with gray and red stone quarried upriver at Degerfelden. A darker stone from Wiesental was used for brickwork and ornamentation. Later stone was sourced from different locations in Germany.
Michael Wang has created a series of monochrome paintings that memorialize the relationship between the building and the earth. Wang produced his pigments by grinding the very stones used to construct the church over the course of 1,000 years, examples of which are exhibited in the church. Wang’s paintings are of a piece with the material foundations of the structure and, by extension, with the city of Basel itself.
Image: Michael Wang, Basler Münster 2016 (production still)