The LUDWIGGALERIE Schloss Oberhausen is located in the popular Kaisergarten with its animal enclosure. In the immediate vicinity there are very different sculptural works of art that invite you to a tour of discovery. The positions of the sculptures are here to see.

1       The internationally active artist Heiner Meyer from Bielefeld describes his work as Pop Art 2.0. Luxury items from the consumer world are the main characters in Meyer's quotation-rich picture compositions. The shoe, which has been an indispensable part of art since Andy Warhol, always plays a key role. But handbags or perfume bottles, cars or art quotations also invite recognition and reinterpretation. A pop game with the familiar, which often comes together to create new stories. The Oberhausen work Red Heels from 2021 is designed in the style of a paper cut-out, the seven high heels wind up in a signal red color to form a shoe pyramid. The red forms a strong complementary contrast to the trees of the Kaisergarten. The view of the sculpture changes when you walk around it. Red Heels has become the new symbol of the LUDWIGGALERIE.

2       The French artist Jean Ipoustéguy (1920–2006) had a retrospective at the Städtische Galerie Schloss Oberhausen in 1991. His bronze sculpture The dancer was acquired for the municipal art collection in 1992. The sculptor, draftsman, watercolorist and writer Ipoustéguy is self-taught. He is interested in the connection between abstraction, natural forms and the human body. This also includes erotic motifs, which he presents in an expressionistic figurative manner. He took part in both documenta III in 1964 and documenta VI in 1977. The artist expressly allows people to touch the sensual bronze forms. His sculptures are in many important international museums.

3      The artist Tobias Rehberger, born in 1973, is designing the pedestrian bridge as part of the Emscherkunst project Slinky Springs To Fame. He designed the bridge based on the children's toy Slinky, a wavy spiral that can climb down stairs, and on the idea of ​​a lasso thrown over the Rhine-Herne Canal. The architect and engineer Maik Schlaich developed the 406-meter-long tensioned band bridge, consisting of 469 spirals, which has connected the Kaisergarten with the grounds of the city's sports association since 2011. Anyone who walks across the bridge on the colorful tartan floor feels like they are walking on clouds. The light and lively bridge sculpture received the international steel innovation award in 2012.

4       “The movement of searching, exploring, and wanting to understand is the content of his art.” This is the statement that Rolf Hegetusch, born in 1948, was made when the Oberhausen Art Association presented this work to the city of Oberhausen in 1994. Movement seems to be the key word here. Hegetusch erected The Gate to the End of the Way and as the viewer walks the path, this work is only completed. The route is to be mastered by each individual. Perhaps it leads, symbolically for the path of life, from "chaos to silence". This was the title of Rolf Hegetusch's exhibition at the time in the Städtische Galerie Schloss Oberhausen.

5      The trained painter, graphic artist, sculptor and miner Heinrich Kasan created the outdoor artwork in 1985 bomb cratersIn the immediate vicinity of the Oberhausen Castle Memorial Hall, which keeps the memory of National Socialism alive with its exhibitions, the bomb and crater are a physical reminder of the horrors of war and its legacy. Kazan often works with steel and stainless steel. Flowers and herbs keep growing out of the sculpture, comparable to grave plants or an attempt by nature to overgrow history.

6       The landscape architects Davids I Terfrüchte + Partner – DTP have renovated the Kaisergarten Oberhausen, a public park from the 2010th century, in terms of design and ecology as part of the Capital of Culture project EMSCHERKUNST.19. Triggered by the bridge sculpture Slinky Springs To Fame by Tobias Rehberger, new squares and pathways have been created, historical visual connections have been restored and the Emscher oxbows have been de-silted. The Nuremberg-based sculptor Hubertus Hess was also commissioned to create a sculpture on the site of a former fountain opposite the former orangery as a playful reminiscence of the dedication of the Kaisergarten. The slight tilt of the KaiserKrone breaks their “royal” seriousness and makes them accessible.

7       In front of the memorial hall stands the mourners, a stone sculpture almost four meters high by the Cologne sculptor Willy Meller. In 1962, the city of Oberhausen acquired the wrapped, introverted female figure, which was carved from an 18-ton block of basalt. An inscription reading "In memory of the victims of war, of slavery and of expulsion" can be read on a stone slab set into the ground. Since the artist Willy Meller was close to National Socialism and was honored with the title "Professor" on the occasion of Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday, for example, the sculpture, at which wreaths are laid every year, is controversial in public.

8       The archaic cultures of America inspire the sculptor Luis Guerrero, who was born in Ecuador in 1938. Stone is not only his preferred working material, but also an important carrier of meaning in his later work. From the original, organic-looking forms, the former master student of Joseph Beuys creates the tilted head of the resettler, which was erected in 1989. The hand drawn in turns the part underneath into the body. Here, the all-round visibility of the sculpture allows different viewing angles and perspectives. A sensual, possibly also haptic perception is tempting. The hollow inside the stone entices the young audience in particular to reach in, becoming a treasure cave, a view through or even a place of the soul of the resettler.

9       Elephant and machine? How do they go together? In the sculpture Confrontation from 1990/91, the Essen-based sculptor Johannes Brus combines exactly these things. Nature and technology, pachyderms and decision-makers on both sides, meet here in an unusual harmony and at the same time a great contrast. The concrete sculpture, which has been in the garden around the LUDWIGGALERIE since the early 1990s, raises questions about this combination as well as about their differences. The material seems to be a little more on the side of the machine and yet also reflects the gray skin of the large mammals. The animal plays a central role in Johannes Brus' work and stands for power and strength.

© of the images: LUDWIGGALERIE Schloss Oberhausen.