About the sculpture by Christian Hasucha
Florian Matzner

A strange scenery:
Directly in front of the main station in Paderborn there is an apple tree, at first sight out of place, as it seems to be squeezed into the steel silhouette that traces a larger, full-grown tree. This outline, according to the Berlin-based conceptual artist Christian Hasucha, "has the shape of the apple tree in my parents' garden. 50 years later, a corresponding outline template is installed in Paderborn. A small apple tree will be able to grow here into its own late form". - Hasucha, who himself describes his interventions and sculptures in public space as "implants" in the city, has performed an act that is as personal and emotional as it is political and social in planting this inconspicuous apple tree: a useful plant in the urban space, almost provocatively "implanted" between the train station and the arterial road, protected by the steel silhouette, framed like an expensive work of art, so to speak, is given a celebrity that makes the tree a landmark for the forecourt.

Since the end of the 1970s, Christian Hasucha has discovered public urban space as a place of action for his often subtle-quiet, but sometimes provocatively loud interventions in urban structures, which he himself describes as "public interventions" and carefully provides with a chronology: "later will be", for example, is the "Project No. 63", for example, is an artistic "implant" in the urban fabric, which, like its medical namesake, is intended to be effective in its direct and concrete surroundings, but will never be able to achieve its function and goal without the coexistence of artwork.

Back to the station square in Paderborn: Passers-by and commuters, who are used to seeing ornamental plants in appropriate decorative tubs in the city, now encounter the apple tree every day, experience the different seasons with it, from the first budding in spring, then the subsequent blossoming, to the harvest of ripe, edible apples. In this way the tree becomes a kind of time machine or, as Christian Hasucha called it, a "kind of natural clockwork that vividly depicts the past and the remaining period of time". And further; "A long period of time is accompanied, while the constellation always remains current."

In the course of time, an almost intimate relationship develops between the pedestrians and "their" apple tree, an identity-forming sign in the anonymous rush of urban space, on the forecourt of the train station, a place that cannot be described as the friendly sunny side of any German city: "später sein wird" is a powerful metaphor for dialogue and communication in urban society!

Cf. Project documentation Nr. 63 will be later