Dovilė Bernadišiūtė, 2014, Lithuania

Light forms for shelf No. 4

I’m interested in metal as material because of its paradoxicality. Most often metal is associated with certain physical qualities: hardness, heaviness, coldness. Yet for me it is rather interesting how and when metal can be sensitive, warm, and light. In the pictures below you can see tools that were made seventy years ago. They belonged to my grandfather. Now they belong to me. Today they are relics. I see them as sculptures. I reconstruct tools from memory. I try to reproduce them as close to the original form but at the same time I strive to add some indetermination as possibility to see them in a new way. Surface, sensitivity, weight, and strain really do matter to me. I made copies of the tools of thin wax sheets, yet I selected a feature that is typical to metal: electrical as contrary to mechanical. When metal is exposed to electricity, thin metal layer emerges on the surface of the object in electrolytic way. This type of metal is very pure and possesses higher qualities than forged or mechanically processed metal. Such process provided the work with monumentality and nobleness. At the same time in a paradoxical way the works of art become almost weightless for the metal layer on top is just one millimeter.

Sheets of wax, electrically formed copper