Christian Gonzenbach

Making Things

Making Things, 2016

Cast aluminium

The Factory is empty.

All workers have left long time ago.

Taking away their tools, their stories.

The artist enters the empty place.

He brings his own furnace.

Sand and aluminum. One ton of sand and one ton of aluminum.

Nothing else.

Using the sand, he makes imprints of the leftovers. A piece of wood, a nail, maybe even a single shoe.

Then he heats the furnace, melting aluminum. With liquid aluminum, he carefully fills the imprints in the sand. Remaking those lost objects is like summoning ghosts. The ghosts of the tools, the ghosts of the workshop.

Little by little new shapes appear, first single objects, mainly tools. Then, from those ghost tools, he makes more complex imprints, making more complex objects.

Someone could recognize a table, a working bench, a ladder on the wall.

Nothing is complete, everything looks like a shadow, a metallic solid shadow.

When there is no more aluminum, or when the space is not empty anymore, he stops.

The furnace cools down. The work is done.

There are shadows in the factory, shadows of tools, working machines, reminiscence of its former activity.

Or just of any human activity?