Sphaera is a monumental golden sphere five metres in diameter on Kapitelplatz, by German sculptor Stephan Balkenhol, installed in 2007 as the fifth project of the Salzburg Foundation's Walk of Modern Art. A 1.4-metre bronze figure of an ordinary man in plain clothes stands on top, looking out across the square.
The Story
The sphere sits in one of the most visually saturated corners of Salzburg: the flat expanse of Kapitelplatz with Salzburg Cathedral on one side and Hohensalzburg Fortress rising on the other. The choice to place something conspicuously modern, conspicuously gold, and conspicuously large in that space was deliberate.
Stephan Balkenhol has made a career of the anonymous figure. Born in 1957 in Fritzlar, Germany, he studied in Hamburg and developed a sculptural language built around ordinary people carved from single blocks of wood or cast in bronze. No dramatic poses, no symbolic attributes, no identifiable persons. His figures are generic to the point of discomfort: the viewer projects onto them rather than reading from them.
The figure on Sphaera is consistent with that logic. He wears an unremarkable shirt and trousers. He looks outward. He occupies the summit of a golden sphere nine metres off the ground in a square where chess players sit below and tourists photograph the Cathedral every day. The scale makes the everydayness strange.
The installation drew public criticism when it appeared, with some Salzburgers arguing it overwhelmed the historic character of Kapitelplatz. That reaction was not unusual for the Walk of Modern Art project, which has consistently introduced work designed to create friction with its baroque surroundings rather than blend into them.
Frau im Fels, Balkenhol's companion piece embedded in the rock face of the Toscaninihof, is a two-minute walk away and worth finding.
Visiting
Kapitelplatz, directly beside Salzburg Cathedral, in the centre of the Altstadt. Always accessible, always free. No booking required. Find the companion piece Frau im Fels in the Toscaninihof nearby.
