Drôle de tricycle
Bronze,1986 - (180x123 cm)
Antoni Clavé once bought a mechanism made up of three cogwheels that he then left for several years in his garden. The weather having done its work in altering and rusting the object, Clavé then brought it into his atelier to give it a second life. He added several planks of Aleppo pinewood broadly tacked on with nails as well as a gardening glove, the whole held onto the wheeled object by ropes, creating a sort of figure seated upon a tricycle. Seen from the side the profile of a man appears, open-mouthed, nose to the wind. Several bonds strengthen this assemblage and the gloved hand of the figure is carefully tied to his vehicle. The sculpture is contemporary with the “guerrier attaché”, a work done in homage to Picasso: A Don Pablo. Both are based on this same love of Antoni Clavé for the assembling of incongruous objects and their transformation into a new pictorial language. Here however, there is no solemn or serious intent. On the contrary, this work is distinctive in its lighthearted whimsy, its lanky silhouette evocative of a sort of Jacques Tati.