S’pore’s Tallest Sculpture To Be Ready By Year-End

Source : The Straits Times, 10 Aug 2007

New icons are popping up in Singapore’s skyline.

Condominium projects with iconic designs like Reflections At Keppel Bay by renowned American architect Daniel Libeskind are taking shape, and the observation wheel Singapore Flyer is now standing tall in the Marina Bay area.

Also reaching for the skies is Singapore’s tallest public sculpture, now being built at Finlayson Green, across the One Raffles Quay office complex.

Finlayson Green is one of five sites designated by the Urban Redevelopment Authority as landmark locations for prominent sculptures under the Public Sculptures Masterplan 2002.

The work at Finlayson Green is the first sculpture to be installed in the five locations.

When it is completed at the end of the year, it will join the more than 350 public sculptures scattered across Singapore.

The $2-million work, which weighs 44 tonnes, will stand at 18.35m. It will be taller than the 13m-high Snowman at VivoCity mall, which stands the tallest currently.

It is funded by the group of companies which developed One Raffles Quay, namely Cheung Kong (Holdings), Hongkong Land and Keppel Land.

The designer is Israeli sculptor David Gerstein, whose public sculptures can be found in countries like Russia and the United States.

The steel structure will ‘depict an upward spiral of progress and capture the energy and momentum’ of the Central Business District, he says.

The Jerusalem-based artist, 62, tells Life! in a telephone interview: ‘Like every big monument in the world, it needs to be visually impressive and size counts as well. My ambition was to do something that would last for years and have it become an icon.’

He is known for his painted metal sculptures, which fuse bold colours with finely wrought dashes and fluid curved lines resembling human figures.

He started out as a painter but switched to sculpture in 1980 to ‘make my life more difficult but also more interesting’.

He says: ‘Most sculptures want to reveal the properties of their materials. But I wanted to find a way to bridge painting with sculpture.

‘I wanted to take painting out of the frame and try to give sculpture the intimacy of paintings.’

Mr David Martin, general manager of One Raffles Quay, says: ‘We believe the striking design will contribute to the 24/7 work, life and play buzz of the area. We hope that David’s sculpture will become synonymous with Singapore’s status as Asia’s financial hub, just like how the Charging Bull sculpture is to New York’s Wall Street.’

Gerstein says he wants to manipulate the viewer’s sense of time and experience of space with his work.

‘When I design an outdoors sculpture, I think of the space around it,’ he says.

‘There’re many high-rise buildings around the sculpture in Singapore and I wanted it to be seen from a distance so I made it even bigger than the first idea.’

He turned to books on Singapore and the Internet for inspiration and made a trip here.

He adds that most Israelis already know about Singapore, mostly about its efficient business side.

‘We take Singapore as an example of an orderly state. We’re researching how to organise transportation in Israel according to Singapore’s.’