Lot 565 R

Anselm Reyle partly uses found objects in his bronze sculptures which he enlarges and casts in bronze, some of which are from the studio waste: 'Reyle encourages his assistants to stick the waste objects like screws, wire mesh and other studio rubbish into a large clump of clay. These amorphous clumps are later cast in bronze. After furnishing with a layer of mirror-enamel and transparent lacquer, patina is added to enhance details and to balance out the shiny body. On a high sculpture pedestal, and with a Makassar varnish, after all this work the object is transformed into a highly reflective assemblage'. (David Ebony, in: Dirk Luckow (ed.), Anselm Reyle, Mystic Silver, exhib.cat. Deichtorhallen Hamburg 2012, p.33).
The particular attraction of these works lies in the visible and invisible ambivalence of valuable materials to the seemingly low-value external appearance. The bronze, a high value material, is made invisible by the layer of lacquer and gains the industrially-fake appearance of fibreglass. In visible contrast to this however is the Makassar wood, a type of ebony. This paradoxical use of materials can only be understood by a viewer who is au fait with the details of the production processes, the traditional sculptural techniques of which Anselm Reyle reduces to absurdity.