Gerhard Richter’s monumental STRIP TOWER (962), conceived in 2023, is situated in the Alpine landscape of Sils Maria, beside Lake Silvaplana, in the Engadine, Switzerland, following its previous exhibition at the Serpentine South Gallery in Kensington Gardens, London, where it was on display from April 2024 to February 2025. Standing over five metres tall, the work consists of eight interlocking vertical panels clad in brightly coloured glazed ceramic tiles. Their arrangement forms a cross-shaped interior space, which visitors can enter and walk through.
The sculpture translates Richter’s exploration of abstraction—and, in particular, that developed in his ‘Strip Paintings’, begun in 2010—into three-dimensional space. These works begin with images that are photographed, scanned and digitally manipulated, before being fragmented into vertical strips—a process in which the repetition, transformation and combination of elements generate new compositions. In ‘Strip Tower’, these bands of colour move beyond the pictorial surface to become matter, structure and space.
The bands of colour run vertically across the ceramic panels and, as they intersect, create a shifting visual experience depending on the visitor’s position and the lighting conditions. The intense colour of the ceramics contrasts with the clarity and vastness of the Alpine landscape. Strip Tower forms part of Elevation 1049, a project by the Luma Foundation dedicated to artistic interventions in the Alpine landscape, and will remain in place until March 2029.
