Back
Print sheet
Add to My Collection
Fountain No. 3
Original title: Fontana núm. 3
1985
Iron
Dimensions: 87 x 208 x 196 cm
Reference: ACF0254
Add to My Collection
This piece clearly exemplifies the sensuality and poetic subtlety that characterises Susana Solano’s work. Iron becomes clay-like in this work, which appears almost to have been moulded, with rivets and welds that remain visible. Created using rudimentary industrial forging techniques, it evokes the irregularities and imperfections of craftsmanship—the human touch. With tactile surfaces and a voluptuous volume, this image of nature is suspended in an abstract space and asserts its presence by adopting the form of steps, a symbol of movement, of the passage of water, or possibly of the contingent. The metaphor transcends the character of the piece as an object, expanding its image beyond the formal limits of the work. In this piece, where we see warmly organic sensations moulded onto the essential, the sculptor’s gaze inscribes the emotional content. The allusion to water is achieved by the reflective surfaces of the galvanized iron, but the transparency of the liquid, which falls and pools, contrasts with the force and solidity of the container where it collects. Water and steel, or the fragility of what is contained and the hardness of the material—in this play of opposites, each element adopts the characteristics of the other in a space of ambiguities. Water, present in many of Susana Solano’s works, is the central element in a series of baths, thermae and impluvia created by the artist—pieces that evoke existential spaces packed with associations and perversions.
