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In a flowerbed on the edge of Theresiastraat stands a concentric oval sculpture: 'Girante' (after the Italian 'girare', which means 'to turn'). The sculpture was chosen in the 1980s by local residents together with the Werkgroep Kunst in de Openbare Ruimte. The task of the working group was to find locations in the city that qualified for the placement of a work of art, usually acquired through the Visual Arts Regulation. Then, together with local residents, they looked at which work would be most suitable.

The shell-shaped 'Girante' is visible from afar. The maker is self-taught artist Mark Rietmeijer, who works in various fields. He was trained as a civil engineer, but in 1976 he left the building construction business. He moved into a studio, took sculpture classes at the Free Academy and then devoted himself entirely to art.

His first sculptures were torsos in clay and aluminium cement, but soon an anatomically correct approach no longer interested him. He wanted to 'leave out what is obscure'. That led to abstract compositions like 'Girante', made in granito, a mixture of cement and granite. Rietmeijer also made sculptures in granite and marble, for which he took lessons in Carrara, Italy.

Rietmeijer immerses himself in art history, alchemy and the philosophy of language, fields of study that he also regularly writes about. His reflections play an important role in determining the form. At the end of the 1980s, for example, the artist combined lead with stone. He regarded the base metal lead, from which the alchemist once wanted to make gold, as a linguistic and philosophical phenomenon: functional in everyday use, but also capable of being elevated to poetry.