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Jeden Monat nähern sich unsere Kolumnisten, die Berliner Filmemacher Dominik und Benjamin Reding, dem jeweiligen Heftthema
auf ihre ganz eigene Art und Weise. Geboren wurden die Zwillinge am 3. Ja nuar 1969 in Dortmund. Während Dominik Architektur
in Aachen und Film in Hamburg studierte, absolvierte Benjamin ein Schauspielstudium in Stuttgart. 1997 begann die Arbeit an ihrem
ersten gemeinsamen Kinofilm „Oi! Warning“. Seitdem arbeiten sie für Fernseh- und Kinofilmprojekte zusammen.

Each month our columnists, Berlin-based filmmakers Dominik and Benjamin Reding, approach the respective issue-specific theme
in their very personal way. The twins were born on January 3, 1969 in Dortmund. Whilst Dominik studied architecture in Aachen
and film in Hamburg, Benjamin graduated in acting studies in Stuttgart. They started working on their first joint motion picture “Oi!
Warning“ in 1997. Since then they have tightly collaborated for TV and cinema film projects.

H e had exhibitions worldwide, his paintings managed to fetch top prices, private point to the static struggles in the room, a fountain splashed in its centre. A circular,
collectors fought over each of his works, his paintings were copied, stolen, even
solid block of white marble. A fixed point of absolute geometric calm. Above it, a
wilfully burnt, he always signed his name “AD” in the self-confident painter tradition, circular opening in the ceiling, raising the room by a whole floor. And higher above
his modernist villa in the Brazilian jungle was legendary (as were his exalted moods), that, like an exhausted exhalation after all the sweaty, architectural trial of strength,
his avant-garde furniture designs are sought-after collector’s items nowadays, his an equally circular skylight, as the last opening into the “world above”, into the
idiosyncratic style of painting – childishly naive and abstractly expressive – has been transcendent, as a distant quotation of the Opaion of the Roman pantheon. We didn’t
copied many times but never equalled. But to this day, nobody knows his origins, his know all that. But the force of this room gripped us, without any explanation, without
homeland or his birth name. His extensive oeuvre is also considered lost. Only his any knowledge of art history. The room was overwhelming. But not like Nazi party
carefully chosen artist’s name remains: Alex de l’Amour. And despite everything, only convention grounds, St Peter’s Basilica or the Colosseum. Not by means of swollen
a few people have the good fortune to know him at all, very few indeed. To be preci- stone muscles, overwhelming scale and axial brutality. The space played. With the
se: only two people... There are truly more beautiful places than Hagen’s pedestrian forces, the senses, the lines and the materials: stone, wood, stucco, iron, glass and
zone in the late-autumn drizzling rain. But the building was hidden away, somewhere – again in subtle contrast – a calm, tiled floor without any pattern. Even the smell of
on the edge of the winding shopping mile. We trudged and trudged and trudged the room seemed carefully calculated: water on marble, a fresh, cool, pleasant scent.
and trudged on, but all we encountered were car park ramps, shop entrances and It was here, in this room, that our love of architecture was kindled. Back home, hours
the gruffly, listlessly “designed” façades of the backs of department stores. “That’s later, we sat in front of our wooden building blocks in the children’s room and tried
it!” The voice of my brother who was standing bent over and soaked in a car-park to recreate this room, to capture it, to fix it, to grasp it in its re-creation, to make the
entrance, sounded relieved. The building hardly stood out in the reconstruction chaos overwhelming experience more bearable. Similar to prehistoric man, who captured
of the Hagen city centre. It was nothing more than mammoths and lions in pictures on the windings of
a historicist villa with a 1970s extension covered in their rocky caves in order to hold on to them. Then,
formwork-rough concrete. We rummaged around for after the nocturnal, intoxicating reconstruction, there
change and looked for the entrance. Our godfather was another hurdle to overcome: the pictures! We had
had strongly recommended a visit. He claimed that never painted like an artist before. What does an artist
you could learn a lot about art there. But we didn’t paint and why at all? With our felt-tip pens, we made
know exactly what “art” was or should be. It was our an attempt to get it right: Free art! But we were nine-
first visit there, our first visit to an art museum on our year-old third-graders and it was a GAME: it wasn’t us,
own. We were disappointed. At first. The entrance but a very special artist, at least as famous as Picasso,
was hidden in the concrete extension and behind it, who was supposed to have created the pictures. This
it looked like our primary school. Lots of ash-grey wondrous name from Hagen, Jan Thorn Prikker, gave
concrete and stairs and corridors with signal-red tiled us the inspiration: Alex de l’Amour. From then on, Alex
floors. The more recent art came first in the building: de l’Amour began his own life as an artist. As befits
large formats of abstract modernism, which had great artists, it turned into a wild, long-lasting, dra-
ter, Ernst-Wilhelm Nay and Emil Schumacher from Foto: Benjamin Reding whelming experience in the museum in Hagen echoed
matic game. Many years later, something of the over-
been completely unknown to us until then. Ecstatic
bars, strokes, blobs, surfaces in all the colours of the
back to us: In São Paulo in Lina Bo Bardi’s Museum of
rainbow. Giant paintings by Hans Hartung, Fritz Win-
Modern Art, in whose central hall the exhibited pain-
Hagen, which glowed such an ultra-marine blue that it was as if you were supposed tings enter into a dialogue with the silhouette of the megacity through floor-to-ceiling
to jump in and swim in them. “Wow!” exclaimed my brother. Then came classical glass fronts, in Oscar Niemeyer’s Memorial Museum for the founder of the city of
modernism. We didn’t know much about it either: Kirchner, Schmidt-Rottluff, Marc, Brasilia (Juscelino Kubitschek), which presents nothing more than merely a few pho-
Macke, Pechstein and a glass artist whose name sounded so impressive that we tographs and manuscript pages of the politician, a breathtakingly designed, futuristic
memorized it: Jan Thorn Prikker. But then, suddenly, after a plain double door, we and mysterious “treasure cave”; and in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum
ended up in a different world. It wasn’t about art, at least not about the kind of “art” in New York, whose seemingly endless spiral of ramps does not make viewing the
as we had seen and understood art here until just now: as framed pictures on white pictures any easier, but the spatial spectacle of the glass-domed interior is all the
walls. Here it was a room! Right in front of us, in the old building. Actually, just a more powerful due to this ingenious architecture. Meanwhile, Alex de l’Amour, as
stairwell with a corridor. Spacious and high, supported by cream-white pillars. In famous as he had once been, went to sleep. Deeply, for the next 40 years. But now,
general, everything here stretched out in length, as if lifted upwards by secret forces just a few days ago, while we were clearing out our old family home, in a cellar room
into higher, distant spheres. In contrast, almost contradiction, deliberate contradic- behind preserving jars, we came across a small, crumpled, soggy cardboard box. The
tion, some structural elements stretched out here and there: the cast-iron banisters, contents: a handful of paintings! Originals by the great Alex de l’Amour! “Oh...” My
as if their own weight pushed the bars outwards as if in a dance. The wooden stairca- brother looked at the small remnant of the once so esteemed, so important “oeuvre”.
se landings, as if the vases and sculptures mounted on them were forcing the wood Where his other masterpieces have disappeared to, we don’t know. If you, dear rea-
to stretch tensely, and the ceiling, as if its weight were pressing into the capitals of der, discover a genuine Alex de l’Amour – go for it! Like Henry van de Velde’s fountain
the supports like into plasticine, the weight causing the plaster to swell. As a counter- room in the Karl-Ernst-Osthaus-Museum, it is a dream picture: unique.

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