Lot 512 D

At first glance Pol Bury's kinetic sculptures appear to be stationary; it is only by closer examination that movement is seen. 'The slowness compels us to stop moving. We are its prisoners, before being its allies. It is impossible to appreciate, to assess the strength and range of its power, without offering it our complete attention. […] The magic which these displacements exercise comes almost exclusively from the slowness and the drop in movement, of which we are the spectators and accomplices. Often an accumulation of identical elements occurs […], and the movement only catches one or a few and leaves the rest still. By unpredictably seizing one and completely leaving the others untouched, an incessantly changing configuration is drawn. Mutual, gentle force of attraction, interruptions, jumps, slides, which draw the inconceivable concurrence of the process of an intermittent period of time, of which we do not know where it will lead us next'. (Jacques Dupon, in: André Balthazar and Wieland Schmid (ed.); Pol Bury, exhib.cat. Kestner-Gesellschaft Hannover 1971/72, p.68)