The "Mosaikgärten" (mosaic gardens), as the city of Munich calls the new communal facility for urn graves, have been officially inaugurated with a ceremony at the end of May.
An artist’s video achieves tactile appeal in wall mosaics Christoph Brech works with video art, photography and installations. The motifs are therefore based on a video work he filmed in Florence which had to be frozen to serve as a model for the two wall mosaics. The artist decided himself on two stills and reworked their colours. The graphic artists of the Gustav van Treeck Studios used these designs to create a pixel-by-pixel pattern that specifies the position and colour of each smalt for the mosaicists. The two stills are just over two minutes apart in the video - the two sites of the mosaics are separated by a two minute walk. Thereby, the artist elegantly transforms the digital into the analogue.

Brech filmed his video work "Il Ponte" in 2011 in Florence. It shows the reflections of the Ponte alla Caraia in the river Arno. Because of the wind the rippled surface of the water only shows an abstract view at first. As the video progresses the water becomes increasingly calmer, the bridge is reflected more clearly. "When enlarging video stills the pixels which make up the digital pictures appear. This means mosaics and video stills have a similar image structure. The pixels of the still can be transferred one by one onto the glass smalts" says the artist. "For me, it was especially appealing to translate the ephemeral material of the video film into a technique that had been used even in pre-Christian times."

Mosaic, glass mosaic
The oldest mosaics made of stone have been found in Mesopotamia near the city of Ur. They date from Sumerian times, about 2.500 – 3.000 BC. The word "mosaic" comes from "musa", named after the nine muses of Greek mythology, daughters of Zeus. They were considered to be protectors of the sciences and the arts.
The ancient decoration technique was already popular with the Greeks and Romans. Especially in recent times, a renewed interest in mosaics can be clearly observed among building authorities, artists and architects. By joining small pieces to create images and ornaments, the mosaicist, so to speak, paints with different materials.

Glass mosaic is made of cast glass slabs coloured with different ferric oxides. Depending on the concept, these slabs are cut into squares or rectangular smalts or directly into shapes. The peculiarity of glass mosaics is the variety and intensity of colours which the selected material lends to the work of art.
Besides smalt mosaics as in the case of the mosaic gardens, mosaics of mixed materials are possible: Cuttings of glass next to smalts and slabs of natural stone can be combined perfectly following the artistic concept. Mosaics laid by hand cannot be compared with industrially produced "standard solutions". The unique surface effect and the incredible colour diversity turn the works into special highlights on pieces of architecture, both inside and outside.