Kris Martin: Good Luck

The sculpture "Good Luck" by conceptual artist and sculptor Kris Martin, born in 1972 in Kortrijk/Belgium, is made up of a contrasting shape. A cube is placed in the centre of a sphere. The golden ratio of the sphere corresponds exactly to the dimensions of the cube, which virtually encloses the sculpture. Its paradoxical arrangement conveys precarious instability, as the laws of gravity make it impossible to place the cube on the indivisible spherical form without further fastening. Martin found the material for his sculpture on site: Rochlitz porphyry tuff, a rock marbled in various shades of red with yellowish veins and purple patches, which was formed 294 million years ago from the pyroclastic deposits of a supervolcano near the present-day town of Wechselburg. Its use for facades, sculptures and jewellery can be traced back to the early modern period and still characterises the townscape of Wechselburg today.

The title and model for Martin's sculpture "Good Luck" alludes to the first abstract sculpture in art history, which the poet and privy councillor Johann Wolfgang von Goethe designed and had installed in the garden of his first residence, today's Goethe Garden House, in Weimar. Goethe documented this world event with a short entry dated 5 April 1777: "αγαθη τυχη [Agathé Tyche] founded!". In this sculpture dedicated to Tyche, the goddess of fate, which was later referred to as the "Stone of Good Fortune", the sphere is arranged on the cube and reflects the idea of a classicist ideal based on law and order that brings the fluctuating chaos and fate to rest. Martin's arrangement literally turns this world view on its head, causing the ideal to falter and turning the title into a wish: Good luck.

(Text: Alexander Ochs / Ulrike Pennewitz)