Claus Bury: High Tide-Low Tide

by Martin Burckhardt, Christa Lichtenstein, Gerhard Kolberg

Claus Bury began his career as a jeweler, and the architectural sculpture he's been making since 1979 retains the rounded shapes, balance and smooth finish of his first trade. High Tide, Low Tide tracks Bury's most recent accomplishments, and, for the first time, includes excerpts from his sketchbooks and journals. Pages detailing his recent travels in Yucatan, Mexico appear alongside black-and-white photographs of Mayan temples. Photographs of Bury's farm works, made of bales of hay, show the influence of the Mayans' iconic geometric purity. Other materials illuminate the artist's latest curved and boned structures, many wooden, by comparing them to ships. And the production of his largest work to date, the 2006 "Bitterfeld Arch," a multi-story steel bridge to nowhere, is documented from the ground up--eight months from start to ribbon-cutting--and contrasted with the "Greenhouse for Thoughts," a 2005 wooden installation shaped like a house frame, with a forest of studs where the walls would be. Though Bury was trained in Germany and is based there, he has taught at RISD, won an NEA grant, and seen his work shown at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

272 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2007

About the author

Martin Burkhardt is an audio artist, cultural theorist, and playwright based in Berlin.