Roland Berger

Roland Berger’s Folded Pillar appears like a fragment of classical architecture that has fallen out of order and been transported into a dreamlike dimension. The familiar form of the column is destabilized through folds and wave-like undulations, making it appear both stable and unstable. The work thus evokes a surreal scenario in which matter loses its habitual solidity and enters a state between stone and fabric, rigidity and flow.

Although the sculpture remains entirely motionless, it unfolds a powerful suggestion of dynamism: light glides across the rhythmic waves of the surface, shadows intensify the impression of movement, and the eye follows an oscillating line that seems to be in constant transformation. In this paradoxical effect, Berger connects to a tradition of static kinetics.

A significant historical comparison can be made with Naum Gabo’s Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave) of 1920: here too, movement emerges from seemingly inanimate material, as a vibrating steel rod produces the illusion of a standing wave. While Gabo relied on mechanical vibration to generate real motion, Berger achieves a similar effect solely through form, surface, and perception. In both cases, the sculpture becomes the medium of a movement that is both real and unreal – one that exists only in the eye of the beholder.

The matte white surface reinforces the impression of material transformation – as if plaster or stone had suddenly become soft and pliable like fabric or wax. This paradoxical effect links classical architectural symbols with a biomorphic, almost organic deformation. The result is a work that resists fixed classification: at once architectural and organic, stable and fluid, familiar and strange. Folded Pillar thus becomes a poetic disruption, inviting viewers to discover movement in stillness and vitality in form.