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In order to create hand work effectively, the alpine dweller has shaped his tools from the simplest of means, but with ingeniousness and skill. Wood and iron, horn and bones and leather are his materials. Scrap metal, and crooked nails; grading them and hording them, even when rust starts to settle. The traces of use and the patina of time… all leave their imprint on material and form.

The tools and objects of daily use on an alpine farm, often worn out and repaired, exude power and magic. Awe and ingeniousness, respect for thriftiness, admiration for hard labor and meager income!

Space Rotor

December 19^th 1992, Iron, gold leaf, width 157cm

That which moved to and fro with measured momentum of strong arms innumerable times
in a semi-circle finally comes full circle - through its opposite.

Lifted to rise,
in couples, weightlessly and Archimedes-like
rotor round.

Washboard – Hallucination

September 23^rd 2004, Wood, feathers, gold and rainbow metal leaf, h 87cm, l 31cm

An exemplary example of a washboard!
Scrubbed thin by the hard labor of naked hands.
Endless back and forth in slippery, soapy water in the washroom’s steamy spasms.
And the Alps, also washed by lonely, masculine hands.

And where previously the hard leftovers of curd soap would conglomerate, now, because of a protracted look,
a window has opened brightly, has glittered through the steam…and its lighting emanates brightly.

A tribute to “Frau Manser’s Dampf-Krampf-Haluzinations-Vermächtnis” of August 23^rd 1992.
And a window on the elementary powers of depth - to “LUMEN NATURAE”.

Ueli Dubs