Robert SchadDie Spur

The Institute for Disease Modeling and Targeted Medicine is situated in Freiburg, where Robert Schad, born in Ravensburg in Upper Swabia, long had his studio before settling in Larians in the Département Haute-Saône and in Chamosinhos in northern Portugal. The work erected in 2021 , was designed in 2018. DIE SPUR emerged from a Kunst am Bau competition for the new building of the Institute for Disease Modeling and Targeted Medicine (IMITATE), a research centre for genetic engineering at the Freiburg university hospital. Some forty pieces of steel combine on the street side of the building into a horizontally reclining structure measuring 15 x 27 x 7 metres, which draws a line meandering in free rhythms into space and which, for all the size and all the weight, obduracy and angularity of the source material, produces divergent impressions – from plant-like qualities to sculptural expressive dance to flashes of lightning or electrical discharge. DIE SPUR addresses the whole human being, our senses and our consciousness, which cannot be separated from internalised experience of history, art and the body. With the new Freiburg work Robert Schad has once again created a work that balances form, content and substance in masterly proportion and stages it with bravura. The present richly illustrated volume, with numerous detail shots as well as the plans and project documents, documents the entire process by which the sculpture came into being, right through to its final installation.