rubber, fan, air, 700 cm x 300 cm x 160 cm
2017
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The sculpture “Soft Divider (The Winner)” relates to the first industrially fabricated barbed wire knot, which was patented by Joseph Gliddens in 1874 and named “The Winner”. This marks the starting point for a history of invention of an industrial instrument, through the help of which spatial asymmetries can be established by taming animals and humans and controlling their movement. From the industrialization of the thorn bush to the globalization of pain, the various models of barbed wire – the protagonists of which are flesh and iron – unfold a social, political and economic history of modernity. In the work “Soft Divider”, the ‘primordial knot’ of barbed wire is turned into a sculptural object by blowing it up in scale. At the same time its materiality is transformed: from hard and sharp steel to fragile air-inflated rubber.
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