Udo

Stainless steel bollards
81 x 60 x 50 cm

This sculpture, named Udo in reference to the Udo Bär branch of the RAJA Group, from which Bettina Pousttchi purchased the five elements that make up the work, bears witness to the artist’s interest in urban furniture in her sculptural practice. As objects that are both discreet and omnipresent in our collective daily lives, street bollards usually dictate the direction and organisation of our bodies and our movements in public space. Brought together, modified by the force of a metal press and polished like mirrors, these cold-looking posts suddenly take on anthropomorphic qualities. Are they slumped over each other, arguing, or in full embrace? They evoke floating figures, or plants bent by the wind, paradoxically fragile despite the material’s robustness. (1)

(1) Strick, Jeremy, ‘Urban Objects: The Sculpture of Bettina Pousttchi’, in Bettina Pousttchi: The City, Nasher Sculpture Center, Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg, Hatje Cantz Publishers, Ostfildern, 2015, p. 75-81