Art creates identity

Across from Frankfurt’s fair pavilions, Deutsche Bank’s new Individual Business Center (ibc) is currently undergoing completion. The new building will serve as the head office of the PBC (private and business clients) department.

Together, the reduced and austere architecture and the new beginning resulting from the move and the consolidation of staff in the ibc create the ideal preconditions for realizing an art concept that reflects the department’s identity as it is manifested through values such as innovation, openness, dynamism, and team work. Art creates identity.



The building’s transparence and the pair of large two-storied office areas, however, do not provide much space for hanging pictures on walls in the ordinary sense. For this reason, Deutsche Bank Art invited internationally known artists to develop proposals for designing the building’s “central” areas:

to date, Olaf Metzel (examples of his sculptures here and here), Heiner Blum (examples of his works here and here), Hubert Kiecol (examples of his works here and here), Franz Ackermann ( works), Claus Bury (works here and here), Günther Förg ( works), Liam Gillick ( works), Georg Herold ( works), Stefan Kern (more here), Tobias Rehberger, Karin Sander ( more), and Ina Weber have already visited the construction site and are working on artistic ideas for it.

The entrance hall, the casino, conference rooms, meeting points, business lounges, and elevator areas, for instance, are all well-suited to artistic intervention. These commissioned works will then be complemented by paper works by the same and other artists, which will enter into a dialogue with the commissioned works, “explain” them, and enrich them with additional perspectives.

An artistic treatment of this nature would create the chance to establish a platform where staff, clients, and visitors could encounter contemporary art: art as a catalyst for communication.