2023

Irish limestone

Edition of 5 + 2 AP

407 x 88 x 146 cm

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With the Ouranos series, Philippe Cramer explores the relationship between sculpture, movement, and public space through bronze works that function simultaneously as autonomous artworks and conceptual maquettes for future monumental interventions.

Named after the primordial Greek deity of the sky, Ouranos evokes a cosmological dimension in which sculpture becomes a symbolic axis connecting architecture, landscape, and collective experience.

Despite their modest scale, the works possess a strong monumental presence. Their flowing curves and looping trajectories unfold like three-dimensional drawings suspended in space, generating a sense of movement, balance, and continuity. Circles, orbital paths, and calligraphic lines create forms that appear both dynamic and timeless, recalling astronomical diagrams, ancient symbols, and imagined architectural structures.

This dialogue between line and monumentality situates the series within a lineage that includes artists such as Constantin Brancusi, Isamu Noguchi, Alexander Calder, and Max Bill, all of whom sought to expand sculpture beyond the object toward architecture, landscape, and spatial experience. Rather than relying on mass alone, Philippe Cramer develops an architecture of line in which structure and movement become inseparable.

Cast in bronze and finished with hand-applied patinas, each sculpture combines the permanence traditionally associated with the material with a remarkable sense of lightness and fluidity. Their forms suggest both natural phenomena—waves, celestial trajectories, topographical contours—and speculative public environments yet to be realized.