Jouet pour le vent

Albert Rouiller (Geneva, 1938-2000)
Collection : Fonds d'art contemporain de la Ville de Genève (FMAC)

Jouet pour le vent (‘Toy for the Wind’) is a soaring, hieratic, monumental sculpture. It is organized into a dense set of connected volumes that support, overlap and hold each other. Through the play of cutout effects and material contrasts between the polished stainless steel and matt corten steel, the forms’ contours evoke baroque contortions as well as organic contours. The use of non-figurative language and solidly structured lines enabled Albert Rouiller to design a sculpture that suggests many things. It is close to abstraction but still evokes natural forms: a tree, human silhouettes, mineral substances. The interlacing, vertically spreading curves, with their reliefs and depressions, contribute to the impression that the sculpture stands lightly despite the mass of metal from which it emerges. After completing his studies at École des beaux-arts (school of fine arts) in Geneva, Albert Rouiller initially worked in stone. In 1962 he started experimenting with industrial materials and methods, such as steel, aluminum and concrete. The expressive forms characteristic of his sculptural approach were articulated through alternations between planes and volumes, reliefs and reinforcements. They reinterpret the forces of nature, between telluric flashes and organic tensions.
Article commissioned by P3Art
Notice: Séverine Fromaigeat, translation: Matthew Cunningham