14. Thomas Rother, Art Shaft Zollverein

14. Thomas Rother, Art Shaft Zollverein

Thomas Rother was an author, sculptor, creator of objects, and spatial artist. In the early 1980s, he established the “Kunstschacht”, or Art Shaft, at Zollverein in the old central machine shop, where he began living in 1990. Rother's workshop was a total work of art – a microcosm within a macrocosm.

Rother worked with industrial materials like dust, ash, and coal, using mining tools and other objects as printing blocks for transfers onto paper and canvas. He also created sound sculptures, which were most recently featured at the Philharmonie Essen. His sculptures can be seen as reminders of a lost industrial world and as “a way to make peace with that time of people and nature being exploited.”