Notes

The cast bronze versions of the polystyrene sculptures of 1990 have a distinctly serious and inhuman mechanistic quality in stark contrast to the lightness and brightness of the polystyrene series shown at the Standard Bank Gallery. The compact works have an architectonic quality, abstract, yet at times are punctuated with small robotic or anthropomorphic allusions to faces or body parts. The interlocking and overlapping elements of the original polystyrene, while not being obviously revealing of the shapes of objects they were designed to protect, reveal their extruded nature and the spaces which are created in them suggest absent but pre-existent forms. The deep recessive, buttresses and futuristic 'architectural' elements in the works produce a science-fiction-like edifice. Many of the compositions are relief like and could read as control panels of sorts or as mechanistic, high relief cyphers. Some are characterised by aggressive saw toothed ridges that were to find their way into many subsequent steel configurations.

The one off bronze sculptures cast in the 1990s by Irene Metal Industries Sculpture are extremely heavy due to the innovative process of their casting, as is the editioned work presented for auction. For the earlier 1990 bronzes, oil impregnated casting sand was packed around the original polystyrene prototypes creating a direct mould. Molten bronze was then poured onto a funnel attached to the fragile polystyrene sculpture. The extreme heat of the bronze vaporised the polystyrene on impact, filling the cavity with molten bronze to the top of the funnel. In so doing it literally cast the sculpture in solid bronze rather than as a hollow shell characteristic of the traditional lost wax method. The solid mass of bronze was left to solidify and cool, later excavated and removed from the packed sand mould before being cleaned and patinated. The accuracy of this technique of casting is to be seen on all the surfaces of the one off sculptures where the original injection moulded texture of the polystyrene is perfectly reproduced.

In 2010 Edoardo Villa gave permission for moulds of a pair of his 1990 polystyrene sculptures to be made and cast in an edition of 3, and an artist's proof, in solid bronze. A pair of these sculptures was exhibited on the 2010 exhibition Arnaldo Pomodoro and Edoardo Villa: A Sculptural Dialogue at the Nirox Sculpture Park in the Cradle of Humankind, Magaliesberg. Villa died the following year, 2011, and no bronzes are permitted to be cast posthumously.

Exhibited

Nirox Sculpture Park, Magaliesberg, Arnaldo Pomodoro and Edoardo Villa: A Sculptural Dialogue, 5 June - 31 July 2010