“Wing” placed in the Serpentine Park, Ladugårdsängen, Örebro, 1992, bronze, 530 cm.
Air, wind, onward and the memory of an airfield there once was. An imaginative being prepared to start in the southwest breeze. Bird, wing, aircraft, wing, bird again and now sculpture. Nature and the cycle of life. Modeled in clay in a too cold Italian studio with frosted fingers, then cast in bronze.
Richard modelled “Wing” in Italy. For weeks he worked to achieve a perfectly smooth surface on the clay. And then one day, with a smile on his face, he removed the safety railings of the scaffolding surrounding the sculpture, 5meters up in the air. The foundry was empty. The wooden slats, specially chosen for their graining, soaked and put into a press weeks ago to coax them into shape, were unpacked. He felt them with his hands, examining his tools.Modelling was fast, short sharp blows, a pattering sound. Does he really know what he is doing? Can he see what he is doing? Are these random blows? Now and again everything happens in slow motion before reversing into the nextcrescendo. No thoughts in the room, only presence. Rhythm to see, but no music to hear. Intensively strange facial expression beyond everyday contact: a dancer in a trance, a whirling dervish, a Japanese master or a symbolic struggle with magical forces the eye cannot see, an indescribable performance on narrow planks, 60 cm, with no protection, three, four, five meters up. The strange expression again, just before something else I had not expected either. What? A series of blows, one after the other, claps of thunder, despair, sorrow, strength; and then the beautiful music of silence. Impossible to control, yet everything was in the right place, How? One wrong blow would have ruined everything. How long did it all take? A quarter of an hour or hours? I have no idea.
