Sortieranlage, Maschinenhalle 1933

Curator: Carl Grossberg's "Sortieranlage, Maschinenhalle," from 1933. It’s currently held here at the Städel Museum. Editor: Oh, what a wonderfully austere space! So geometric and precise, yet…somehow unsettlingly still. It almost feels like a stage set for a silent film about industry, drawn by an engineer’s trembling hand. Curator: Precisely. Grossberg's work epitomizes Precisionism, that almost photographic rendering of industrial architecture. I am immediately reminded of Fernand Leger! There is such a modern perspective within these meticulously rendered pencil strokes on paper. Editor: It is drawing our attention towards the cold heart of the machine. It’s tempting to decode its lines using semiotics. This image serves as a sign, a signifier even, hinting at the social and economic machinery of its time. The bare structure almost hints towards something else, something looming on the horizon perhaps. Curator: Yes, his visual language almost borders on surrealism! Despite his technical approach, there's this looming emptiness—like a melancholic futurism where man is eclipsed by his machines. Don’t you sense an isolation in its grand scale, like a memory palace to technology? Editor: Absolutely! The industrial sheds lack only one thing: shadows! And it feels cold, the stark representation lends itself to a world that could continue without us. I would describe this work as uncanny precisely because it reflects on these changes so effectively! It certainly goes beyond merely the industrial facility as a beautiful motif. Curator: Grossberg offers more than just lines. He shows us something beyond material—almost a mirror to society as its shifts under our feet. Editor: And though his visual language reflects the starkness of industrial reality, he encourages to look towards something that can offer greater nuance for everyone. A fascinating paradox if you ask me! Curator: True, very true! It offers a space for all perspectives after all, regardless of their preference for hard-lined industrial representations! Editor: That's why the work transcends any particular category. Instead, Grossberg leaves us in wonder to imagine a world among and beside the cogs and flywheels.