Black Circle Square A work of art by Massimo Bartolini for Emscherkunst 2016

As part of the Emscher Art 2016, the Emschergenossenschaft erected the artwork "Black Circle Square" according to the design of the Italian artist Massimo Bartolini. This is a "garden without trees" (Bartolini) constructed in reinforced concrete. The square garden area with an edge length of 10.50m is surrounded by a wall (height 1.25m) and contains a cylindrical pool in its interior, which stands out as a circular water surface in the square garden area. The geometry of the artwork is borrowed from the painting "Black Circle" (1915) by the painter Kasimir Malevich (1878 - 1935) and forms a three-dimensional and scaled-up translation of the painting in the landscape. The work of art is located in the immediate vicinity of the Emschertalhof on the city border of Castrop-Rauxel with Dortmund-Mengede. There is also the newly built flood control reservoir Mengede with its outlet structure.

In addition to its function as a work of art, sculpture and installation, the structure serves as a fire water tank for the Emschertalhof. The volume of the water tank required for this purpose results in the structural depth of the cylindrical basin.

Quotation www.emscherkunst.de: "In reference to the Russian-Ukrainian painter Kazimir Malevič (Russ. Kazimir Malevič, 1878-1935), Italian conceptual artist Massimo Bartolini is creating a performative sculpture titled Black Circle Square for Emscherkunst 2016.
Malevich's works "Black Square" and "Black Circle" (both 1915) have gone down in art history as a kind of zero point of painting and are often referred to as icons of modernism. They represent key works that mark the paradigm shift in painting from representational art to an abstract mode of representation.

Massimo Bartolini's work Black Circle Square draws a connection between the historical story of the Emscher River and the industrialization of the Ruhr region to the works of Kasimir Malevich, which are around one hundred years old. At the flood control reservoir (HRB) in Dortmund on the border to Castrop-Rauxel, Bartolini is building a kind of sculptural replica and further development of the painting "Black Circle": as a blow-up on a scale of 1:10, a black circle is inscribed in the large white plateau - a pool that carries water. For Bartolini, the white square with the black pool represents a kind of garden without trees, which is to be regularly cleaned in a performative act during the duration of the exhibition. As if it were a spiritual task on which the cleanliness of the whole world depended. [...]"