Markus Jeschaunig: Königsgrube (King's Pit)

Königsgrube
A former pumping station is now an art installation; the name it retains has an auspicious ring to it: Königsgrube—the King’s Pit. The past and the present shape Markus Jeschaunig’s work in which he has transformed fragments of the dismantled building into a hybrid landscape.

From 1860 to 1967, coal mining at the Königsgrube pit in Herne was extremely productive; but once the black gold had been fully removed the ground that remained was depleted and riddled with holes. The pumping station’s purpose was to channel the wastewater from neighbouring municipalities into the Emscher river—untill the closure of the coal mine made underground wastewater disposal possible and the pumping station was shut down. Jeschaunig used the partially filled-in substructure to build an installation that sculpturally integrates various elements of the building: a part of one staircase has been preserved; three pipes tower up to create a solardriven fountain from which water drops and sounds emerge. Where the over twelve-metre-deep basin once stood a marsh forest has evolved, a biotope of seven nursery-grown black alders that thrive in damp ground and bring to mind the pre-industrial wetlands that once bordered the Emscher. Rainwater is collected in a cistern on the paved forecourt and, together with the photovoltaic pergola, enables completely self-sufficient operation. As an artistically reshaped ruin, Jeschaunig’s work alludes both to the outstanding technology and to the enormous ecological devastation brought on by coal mining, while at the same time showing a way for new life and climate-positive places to emerge in the city.

Markus Jeschaunig, born in Graz in 1982, lives and works as a visual artist and architect in Graz and Premstätten. With study visits to the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Istanbul and the Vienna University of Technology, he completed a degree in architecture at the University of Art and Design Linz in 2010. As part of his artistic activity ‘Agency in Biosphere’, he has created numerous international works that move between the poles of fine arts, natural sciences, ecology and activism.

Emscherkunstweg
The Emscherkunstweg (Emscher Art Trail) is a public art collection that stretches along 100 kilometres on the banks of the Emscher river in the Ruhr area in Germany. It includes 24 works of art in public space by artists or collectives such as atelier le balto, Rita McBride, Tadashi Kawamata, Tobias Rehberger or Silke Wagner.

Based on an inventory of artworks created for three major temporary exhibitions from 2010 to 2016, Britta Peters, head of Urbane Künste Ruhr, consolidated the loose setting as a permanent sculpture path. Besides an artistic revision of the existing art works five new commissions were added since 2019: Following Neustadt by Julius von Bismarck with Marta Dyachenko (2021), Public Hybrid by Daniel Jablonowski (2021), Emscher Folly by Nicole Wermers (2022) and Pool Lines by Sofía Táboas (2023), Markus Jeschaunigs Königsgrube is the most recent new addition, which gets inaugurated at the end of March.

In the catalogue Emscherkunstweg, published in 2024, you find a helpful companion to visit and bike the sculpture trail. It describes all 24 works, the history of the river and the region in detail in essays and photo series. The book is also available in English.

The Emscherkunstweg is a collaboration between Emschergenossenschaft, Regionalverband Ruhr and Urbane Künste Ruhr. It stands under the aegis of Ina Brandes, Minister for Culture and Science of the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and is supported by the Ministry for Culture and Science of the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Artistic Director Urbane Künste Ruhr / Emscherkunstweg: Britta Peters
Curator Emscherkunstweg: Marijke Lukowicz