67 tons heavy, 14.5 meters high, 4.2 meters wide, and 13.5 centimeters thick – despite these dimensions, the monolith, which is tilted exactly 3 degrees to the north, appears like the proverbial line in the landscape when viewed from the side. As a solitary piece on the vast spoil heap, Serra's sculpture concentrates all eyes on itself as a fixed point and attracts the viewer. The changing graffiti on its surface does not diminish the material's primal power. The brittle, rusting large sculpture in its minimalist form resembles a kind of industrial land art that only makes sense in this area, in the context of the history of steel and coal. However, the slab itself does not come from Ruhr area production: it was supplied from France in 1998 due to the lack of domestic production capabilities in this size.
A lonely stele without decoration, without function: Like the other steel sculptures by Richard Serra in Bilbao, Paris, or Miami, this monument does not represent anything but confronts with its materiality. For some, the encounter on the mountain triggers a post-religious mystical fascination, while others allow their gaze to wander quite mundanely over the surroundings: from the Schurenbach heap, one can see far over the transformed cultural landscape of the Ruhr area, looks towards the nearby Nordsternpark with its distinctive red double-arch bridge, over to the Tetrahedron and to the grounds of the Zollverein mine.
The short ascent to the approximately 50-meter-high spoil heap leads either directly over a staircase path or more broadly via a serpentine gravel path through the spoil forest that was afforested as early as the mid-eighties. Prior to that, the site was mainly filled with spoil from the Altenessener mines and, until its closure in 1986, also from the Zollverein mine.
Another major work by Richard Serra, the "Terminal," can be visited in Bochum in front of the main train station. As a former landmark of the documenta in Kassel, it was acquired by the city in 1977 after intense cultural-political disputes.
