In interweaving past and present, André Schweers develops the characteristically new, an unmistakable visual form of expression, his pictorial language. It opens up a variety of associative spaces and makes it possible to draw new, cross-temporal and intercultural connections within our contemplative museum collection.

Lines of quiet beauty – The Museum DKM.

Every accumulation, every storage of material bears the traces of human activity within it. Each individual object is detached from its original function and placed within a new formal context. In this process, the present is condensed and becomes the sediment of history. The outward structure of the works thus serves not only as form but also as evidence of this transformation and as its silent archive.

For over a decade, cave and honeycomb structures have been a central reference point in the work of André Schweers. The artist received formative impulses, among other things, during a trip to Cappadocia (Central Anatolia in Turkey), where he visited the caves of Göreme. The encounter with these archaic spaces – an expression of an early human desire to shape the environment – continues to have an impact to this day. Schweers repeatedly rediscovers these primordial forms: at the excavation sites of Cretan-Minoan cultures, in the historic masonry of medieval castles, or in the French dovecotes, the pigeonniers or colombiers, which have established themselves as an independent architectural typology since the Middle Ages. Characteristic is a strictly organized spatial system into which the traces of time and transience are inscribed.

Even though the cast and pigmented reliefs evoke associations with dovecotes, beehives, cave systems, or urban models, their formal core lies in an elemental motif: the arch. As an archetypal, human-made form, it represents structural stability and permanence. To this day, it appears in archaic dwellings and burial sites, in ancient viaducts and aqueducts, as well as in historic gateway constructions – as a motif that endures through time and carries history.