Yana Wernicke: From quarry to art gallery – the red Main sandstone
Cooperation with the HSBI 2022/23

How did the red Main sandstone get to Bielefeld? Yana Wernicke reports on the Kunsthalle Bielefeld’s unusual material for the region and her photographic approach to a stone with a long history.
Sandstone has shaped the image of our cities for thousands of years. Castles, palaces, churches and prestigious town houses were built from sandstone. The surface and color of the stone vary from region to region and give cityscapes their characteristic regional appearance. The reddish coloration of the Kunsthalle’s façade is mainly found in quarries along the River Main in Germany.
How did this building material, which is popular in the Rhine-Main region, come to be used in East Westphalia? Wouldn’t the ambitious museum design have called for a different, more noble material? In fact, it was probably a question of money. Originally, the building by US star architect Philip Johnson was to be clad in granite. However, the idea was rejected due to rising costs.1 The economic necessity resulted in a design coincidence that proved to be a success, as this is the only reason why the Kunsthalle stands there today in a striking red. What would it have looked like if it had actually been made of granite? Perhaps it is precisely the less expensive red Main sandstone that gives the building its uniqueness and – in contrast to the granite – lends the monumental building a less threatening appearance. Perhaps it is also the hand-crafted scratching of the sandstone slabs that makes the building appear closer and more alive.
To get to the bottom of the red Main sandstone, Yana Wernicke goes in search of quarries where it is still mined today. She finds what she is looking for in Miltenberg in Lower Franconia, at the fourth-generation family-run natural stone factory “Wassum” – one of the few that is still allowed to quarry the red Main sandstone today. Here she was not only able to take photographs, but also gained in-depth insights into the special features and processing of the red stone, which in turn strongly influenced her view of the Kunsthalle. The photo series was created in three locations: in Bielefeld directly at the Kunsthalle, in the Wassum sandstone factory and at home in the studio.
The building itself interests her as a monumental, red structure, whose formal counterparts she finds in the vertically sloping walls of the quarry. The square dimensions of the façade stone slabs have visual references in the cuboids of the freshly quarried stone. She pays particular attention to the nature and origin of the material as well as its wear and tear in the form of marks and repaired, patched areas. Still lifes arranged in the studio from pieces of stone brought from Miltenberg take up the architectural gestures of the Kunsthalle in their basic forms and are playfully reproduced with minimal means.
1 Friedrich Meschede (ed.), 50 Years of Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Cologne, 2018, p. 24.
The work was created as part of text-image seminars with Prof. Roman Bezjak and Prof. Dr. Andreas Beaugrand from the Department of Design at Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences in the winter semester 2022/2023 and summer semester 2023.
Gallerie






















