Kunstsammlung NRW
Das "Theater" von Ralf Brög und Kevin Rittberger an der Heinrich-Heine-Allee. Foto: Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen

The Wehrhahn Line – Stations for Everyday Life

If you find yourself entering one of the underground stations of the Wehrhahn Line in Düsseldorf's city center, it might be worth your while to keep your eyes and ears open. Over a period of 15 years, the City of Düsseldorf collaborated with engineers, architects, and artists on the construction of six underground stations that have served since their inauguration in February 2016 as much more than functional spaces. Here at #32, we accompany an imaginary stroller as she immerses herself in these various subterranean worlds, becoming a flaneur at locales that otherwise follow the rhythms of everyday life.

By Jan-Marcel Müller

In February of 2016, an ambitious urban development project reached completion in downtown Düsseldorf: reopening after a 15-year-long collaboration between municipal administrators, engineers, a Darmstadt architectural office, and various selected artists are the six redesigned underground stations that lie along the 3.4 km extent of the Wehrhahn Line. Alongside their serviceability, they offer a range of aesthetic experiences which the town's Cultural Council plans to render more accessible through guided tours. This time, remarkably and exceptionally for Düsseldorf, the artists were not recruited to put the finishing touches on an existing urban renewal undertaking, but were instead integrated into the design process for the stations from the very beginning.

And now, together with our imaginary flaneur, let us familiarize ourselves with these six stations, which are used by 51,300 travelers daily. She is determined to discover for herself what kind of experiences a trip through the Wehrhahn Line can offer.

Embarking upon her journey through the Wehrhahn Line from the south, she is greeted at the entrance of Kirchplatz Station and accompanied all the way to the platform by squiggly strings of orange steel. As she descends, they become concentrated, forming an appealing contrast to the white background. It may be that naïve associations with drizzled orange sugar on white icing play through her mind; suddenly, she realizes that the seemingly abstract contours form words. Before long, however, her shifting perspective renders the lines of text – now three-dimensional – illegible once again. Our reception of the textual contents of this work by the Leipzig-based sculptor Enne Haehnle, entitled Spur X (Track X) is intentionally elusive, fleeting.

At the station at Graf-Adolf-Platz, she is confronted by visual impressions of unequal intensity: here, the walls are covered in a piercing green, luminous, powerful, not however noxious. The green is traversed by black and orange striations that evoke the impression of looking down at algae blooms on a lake. In fact, these glass panels by the Düsseldorf artist Manuel Franke were inspired by the structure of the agate for which work was named. Here – as in all of the other stations as well – our gaze remains undisturbed by distracting advertising billboards, which enhances the impact of the art. Travelers here encounter a striking play of color and form that is simultaneously intensive and organic, and which almost unavoidably catches and beguiles the eye.

At the next station, at Benrather Straße, her gaze is drawn up into outer space. The entire station is clad in metal paneling, and users feels almost as though they have boarded a spaceship that is about to launch into orbit. This impression is strengthened by monitors that provide views of stars and planets. Or has our flaneur already completed her journey into deep space? Does she move now noiselessly through the expanses of galaxies? The work Himmel oben, Himmel unten (Heaven Above, Heaven Below) by the Swiss sculptor and installation artist Thomas Stricker immerses her in a sublime calm, at the same time offering her the option of balancing everyday life against the sheer enormity of the universe: Faced with such incalculable magnitudes, what really matters? With this question in mind, she travels onward, to Heinrich-Heine Allee.

There, acoustic and visual elements converge in three installations: these are the "three model spaces" of the Düsseldorf artist Ralf Brög and his musical colleagues. The first space, the Theater, takes escalator riders past a red theater curtain while mysterious voices intone excerpts from an audio play. With Laboratory, sounds emitted by brightly clad loudspeakers mix together in a passageway. Mounted there are ceramic panels whose patterns and structures are reminiscent of Sol LeWitt, and which accompany the sound mixture. For the third installation, entitled Auditorium, a staircase has been clad in white, variously shaped enamel tiles; audible here is processed birdsong. This station, then, refers explicitly to music and theater, a choice our flaneur regards as entirely appropriate given the station's proximity to Düsseldorf's opera house.

In the next station as well, the one on Schadow-Straße, her attention is drawn to connections between "above" and "below." During her descent, she encounters alternating dark, saturated blue and white glass paneling. She has the impression of examining the work table of an urban architect: cityscapes, systems of coordinates, geometric shapes. These seem to recall the urban planning dimension of the Wehrhahn Line project. Below, she finds itself in a cone of daylight, which streams onto the platform through an expansive window. Through their ample, spacious design, the platforms of the Wehrhahn Line seem particularly close to the surface; here indeed, the connection seems immediate. The centerpiece of the station, designed by the Weimar media artist Ursula Damm and bearing the title Turnstile, is located beneath this window: recognizable on a projection surface are distorted film sequences of pedestrians on the surface above – obtruding now on our flaneur are questions about data security and surveillance.

At the last station, located at Pempelforter Straße, the Berlin-based artist Heike Klussmann has broken open and expanded the vertical spaces visually by means of geometric black-and-white forms under the title Surround. Here as well, the linear elements begin from the entrances and run along floors, ceilings, and walls, continuing all the way to the platform. The rigorous and richly contrasting design of the station is striking, and makes a futuristic and cinematic impression that is comparable to Stricker's orbital visions.

At this point, our flaneur concludes her journey, and returns to the upper surface bearing numerous impressions: on her journey through Düsseldorf's underground, the works of art have enjoined her to slow her step and take in her surroundings with greater receptivity. She has become a genuine flaneur, who momentarily forgets all about her actual destination.

Of course, when we consider all the people our flaneur passed during her journey – as they hurry along, their gazes directed fixedly at their mobile devices – the question inevitably arises of what kind of impact the art on display can really have. But if we instead search for #wehrhahnlinie at Instagram, we might even arrive at the conclusion that at least some of them were producing snapshots of the locations they have enjoyed discovering beginning in February.