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Cemetery Chapel, Fürstenwald Chur,
"Omnia cui cedunt, divino cedat amoris" 1996 – Leta Peer

Catalogue text, "Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Graubünden",
Quart Verlag Lucerne 2003
ISBN 3-907631-43-9
Author: Isabelle Köpfli, Zurich in May 2003

From the outside, the milk-white glass window front of the chapel is opaque, but not transparent. Similar to a picture puzzle and depending on the way the light falls and on the viewer's perspective or movement, gradually only a few outlines appear at first, then the beginnings of the features of bodies or faces. Yet nothing is recognizable or definite. In the memorial place at the transition between life and death, this mystery, something virtually symbolic remains incomprehensible, impenetrable.

What reveals itself to the eye, though, when one enters the house of prayer, are multiple fragments from religious image language from both the western and the eastern world. The techniques of representation that were originally tied to culture – painting, relief, mosaic – have been overcome in the rough grain due to enlargement, so that they are able to conjoin with one another. The whole arrangement thus strives for a unity without succumbing to a leveling.

The warm pastel shades of the pictures, from yellow to orange and a delicate violet and greenish charcoal gray, first really unfold their luminosity when sunlight falls on them, fade when clouds pass by. Then the pictures seem somewhat cracked and bodiless. The interplay of light and color brings movement, vitality into the composition. This is enhanced by a two-fold depth effect. Since the individual pictures are applied to three sides of the multiple glazing, they cast shadows on the image planes behind, as well as onto the translucent Thermolux structure that separates the outermost panes. A special effect is created at night when light is on inside; then the pictures are also visible from the outside, their colors reduced.

The new building of the Fürstenwald Cemetery, in an elevated location above Chur and close to the edge of the forest, was built in 1996 by the architectural firm of Urs Zinsli as a simple exposed concrete cube.

The gigantic chapel window was created by the artist Leta Peer (*1964) from Graubünden, who lives and works in Basel, New York and Florence. To animate the six-meter high and eleven-meter wide window surfaces, the artist purposely started from miniatures, details or particulars taken from books or postcards. Using a special technique of copying, she enlarged the models to forty times the original size and applied them to the panes of glass with a screenprint technique.

Ignoring the division of windows given by the metal supporting structure, the twelve picture segments form a rhythm of their own. Five motifs are each arranged mirror-like in relation to an imaginary vertical axis, whereby the motif at the side, the Madonna with Child, overlaps itself. The principle of duplication occurs here again, not because of shadowing or mirroring, but rather as a perpendicular shift. This motif with the largest surface area is taken from Filippino Lippi's Madonna of the Sea, a small Renaissance panel picture from Lorenzo de Medici's collection measuring just 40 x 28 cm in the original, which was first attributed to Boticelli.

Above and to the side of the Madonna, there are scenes from the life of Buddha, taken from Indian terracotta reliefs from the Mathura School: Young Woman and Comedian and Kubera, the god of riches, from the 9th century as a Hindu motif.

A third motif, the pensive youth (2nd/3rd century), completes this series towards the upper center of the window. Overlapping himself in a mirror image, he forms the entrance into the artwork, because the composition can be most easily read here, due to the only minimal overlapping and because it is surrounded by free window surfaces. Towards the side it becomes more and more dense and complex, so that it is difficult to visually isolate the individual elements. The fifth motif, and the only one that is not figurative because it is from Islam, is from a faience mosaic from the Andalusian Alhambra, and it flanks the center of the picture. The reason why Leta Peer succeeds in avoiding that the systematic image arrangement has a static or banal effect, is due to the asymmetry of the coloration.

The window radiates an atmosphere of tranquility, inviting reflection and meditation. In addition to the harmonious coloration, this may also be due to the interplay of dimensions. The sheer size of the window is relativized by the immense enlargement of the figures and ornaments that radiate stability in their clear arrangement.

These pictures that we all recognize either in this way or in variations, which have lasted though centuries as though they had always been there, allude to a kind of suspension of time, eternity. Those who find their way into the chapel are thus confronted with Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic and, implicitly, Jewish icons: the surfaces free of images symbolize the form of the seven-armed candelabrum, the Menorah. At the same time, though, the openness of the work also signals taking religions not explicitly addressed into consideration. In this sense, Leta Peer's artistic design of the house of prayer is courageous and sensitive, as she takes in the spiritual state of mind at the threshold to the third millennium without judging or weighting and thus meets the jury's requirement of not visualizing restrictions that determine specific religions.

Sacral art, once prepared for a better understanding of religious subject matter, but also as a reverence and memorial to the divine and the afterlife, does not reveal the secret of life, yet it makes what is universally religious more present and thus more comprehensible. Comfort may be found in this and in the juxtaposition and intermingling of these cultural testimonies there is also a reflection on human fate, in which we are, to a certain extent, united. Humanity has always sought answers to this and has at least found meaningful ways of dealing with it, including gestures and actions such as ceremonies of leave-taking.

"An impressive phenomenon of the ritual of death today is that of reconciliation, which often includes the last words of the dying person, coming to terms with the past, and, not least of all, a spiritual blessing," writes Leta Peer in her project dossier. "Because, as though we had only this moment in life to reconcile ourselves with everything, both life and death, we are filled with the longing to cast off all these earthly resistances. - As though earthly resistance were not most tangible in dying. - Perhaps we should seek reconciliation earlier, so that we can say later: it is good, after all, that there is an end to that too."

The small inscription in the lower right corner of the artwork speaks for itself:
Omnia cui cedant, divino cedat amori. (All that happens to us, happens through divine love.)

 

 
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