RIK POOT - ODE AAN EEN BERGRIVIER

SOME CULTURE...

Bronze sculpture (1985)

With this sculpture, the artist expresses the struggle between the ideal and drab reality. This work of art, which is almost three metres tall, represents a man and a horse who, through the fact that they are shut up in a metro tunnel, speak to us of nostalgia for pure nature, primary forces and vital energies. “Why did the rider dismount his horse, when he was riding astride the wind of the plains?” Other than monumentality, the artist has expressed strength and vitality.The bronze plates seem to have cracked under the pressure of the tensions present in the closed volumes. This is very clear on the back and neck of the whinnying horse as well as on the rider’s torso. Rik Poot sculpted this rider as “a protest against the artificial world with its computers, psychiatrists, sociologists, psychologists, sexologists and the organisation of leisure activities for pensioners.”