“You can unmask and reveal things with images; you can anticipate them and examine them. Images are trial runs for unborn reality,” says Ludger Gerdes. This Düsseldorf sculptor made his first public appearance in the early ’80s with installation works that were constructed “image-sites,” models that cautiously explored architecture and landscape as the most important arenas of human life. “The first and foremost function of art,” wrote Gerdes in 1984, “is to create and give shape to the spaces we live in.” Art, he says, should be in the public domain and act as a vehicle for social communication.