The installation consists of 4 photo-assemblages:

Trip to Tunis I
Trip to Tunis II
Alhambra
Wilhelma

All photo-assemblages have the format 80 X 250 cm.
Technique: Photography, Mirror, Acrylic on Glas

The formal concept of the installation is based upon:

- 4 horizontal reflection-lines whose combine
  the 4-partwork into one.
- Monochromatic colour panels whose outlines criss-cross
  the horizontals vertically.
- Photographs, drafted as open picture panels and
  autonomous picture realities, correspond to the red,
  blue or black colour panels.
- "Void spots" - the transparent picture parts.
  The shadows, cast onto the wall behind it
  by the reflection lines, strip the picture of its
  two-dimensional quality.
  The picture becomes a relief.

The substance of the conception of the installation

"Why is a monumental tradition of abstract art
that is more than one thousand years old, namely Islamic architectural decoration, the most neglected
of the great styles of world art to date?" asks Ad Reinhardt
in his text "Art versus History".
He terms the Islamic architectural decoration, whose achievements in his eyes have primarily been the destruction
of building structures through an "abstract" ornamentation
as well as by prohibiting pictures, as the breeding ground
of "Art as Art."
The geometrical construction ornamentation,
the arabesque, as an "all over", an undetermined picture panel,
as an ornamental or structural coherence that spreads out to all sides in a non-compositional manner.

Alhambra - Berlin

The cupola roof of the Torre de las Damas of the Alhambra
in Grananda, about 1320, can today be found in the Museum
for Islamic Art in Berlin.
The museum purchased the cupola from
the grandchildren of the first owner, Arthur Gwinner, the
leading banker of Deutsche Bank's second generation, in 1978.

He had exported the cupola to Germany in 1891 and had
it installed in his Spanish Room in the Rauchstraße,
in the Tiergarten district of Berlin,
"In the unwritten history of the European reception of
Islamic art the Alhambra is of particular importance,
because it was the first, thoroughly documented Islamic
construction monument altogether." (Klaus Brisch)

Wilhelma

"In Germany no city deserves the name Bagdscheserai, garden
city, more than Kannstadt near Stuttgart; not only because
of the garden's beautiful and ingenious water-arts, but also
because of the Moorish construction of Wilhelma's royal
pleasure seat, which transplants the oriental marvels of the
Alhambra into the Magic Valley (Zauberthal) of the Neckar
river, and as far as beauty and curiosity are concerned
surely exceeds the beauty and romance, highly praised by all
those who describe the Krim, of the palace of Bagdscheserai."
(Journal for Practical Construction Art,1859)

Trip to Tunis I + II

The photographs were taken on a trip to Tunis in the
building that houses the harem in the Bardo palace, which
belonged to the last ruling Bey.

Rudolf Bonvie, April 1995