superposition

sculpting with snow & ice – 'Superposition' exploits the inherent nature of materials to achieve translucency in this work. By applying layers of ice in form of ice-plates into the snow at a unique spot the creation of fluidly rhythmic and structured composition was made. Build up the ice in different relations to each other will transform the single and for each plate unique shape into one single object. By lighting a few plates up the appearance will apply in different shades and layers.

Ice is a extremely brittle material. To get the frozen ice-plates out of the formwork and transported to the final destination was the major challenge. Rough conditions as –12°C to –20°C and the brittleness of the material caused that about 90% of our 35 iced plates broke. The plates were frozen overnight between 12 and 20 hours at –12°C to –18°C and had to be cleaned regularly from the falling snow, because that would have been a isolation and prevented the ice from freezing. Also, the ice gets more and more brittle as it gets colder than –12°C. The sizes of the ice-plates were 200x60 / 200x45 / 120x100 / 100x100 cm. By the time our Team got into a routine for fabricating these ice-plates in an efficient way, but it was still a matter of luck to get the ice-plates out of the formwork in a whole piece. Also, it was possible at some broken pieces to place them together and fix them by pouring cold water over the broken spot. That water froze instantly and connected the plates together, but it is not a very durable connection.

(c) Felix Redmann 2022