Wings
Leather, fibreglass, wire, rope total dimensions 500 x 100 x 10 cm
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The Wings are formed of a thousand leaves.
I cut the first leaf on the first day of autumn 1995, and finished the last one on the first day of winter.
Leaf shapes were cut out of differently coloured harness leather and impressed with a leaf surface. For this I used an antique stamp mould made of iron and copper. I dampened the leather with water, heated up the stamp press, then pressed the leaf shape with heavy duty clamps untill the shape held.
This labourious process produced nearly a thousand leafs in different shades of brown. They were then sewn to fibreglass rods and subsequentle formed in symmetrical wing shapes.
(for sketches of this project, see Wing Archive)
Within Hybridicon, the Wings were suspended off the ground, but not too high. The space betwee the Wings suggests the absence of a body, which might just be human in size. The Wings face ‘Flora Dei’, as if attracted by it.
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Martin Helm 