Offener Rollkörper

Offener Rollkörper by Maximilian Verhas

A single, sweeping silver form opens out into a curved, open body – clear in its line, without embellishment. The “Offener Rollkörper” can be understood as a further development of the sphere: a closed initial form that was cut open, stretched and twisted until a related, open structure emerged. This idea – forms developed out of the sphere – shapes the entire group of works known as the Rollkörper. It is less about depicting something visible than about a pure investigation of surface, curvature and space. The “Offener Rollkörper” is one of Maximilian Verhas’s best-known and most frequently exhibited works. At first glance its form appears simple, almost self-evident – yet it is precisely composed, so that a new and convincing silhouette emerges from every angle.

Like the “Kleiner Raumanker”, the “Offener Rollkörper” belongs to the conceptual group of the Rollkörper, with which Maximilian Verhas has been engaging since the early 1990s. Central to it is the idea of a sculpture in which all sides are of equal standing – without a fixed top or bottom, without a defined front or back. “My intention with the sculptures was never to produce a beautiful object, but one that can be viewed equally from every side,” Verhas says in a video interview. In the “Offener Rollkörper” this principle becomes particularly vivid: the open, rounded form positively invites you to turn it in your hands and discover it anew again and again.

Cast from 2.2 kg of pure fine silver and with a diameter of approximately 17 cm, the “Offener Rollkörper” is one of the iconic edition works in the Verhas programme at BullionArt. Each of the 25 signed and numbered examples unites the artist’s pared-down, all-round formal language with the material value of fine silver.

Please note: the silver price is subject to market fluctuations; the final sale price depends on the prevailing price of fine silver and is provided on request.