Tao II
1987
Iron and antirust paint
This intervention was part of a series of murals commissioned by the city of Madrid to various artists. The walls were in different parts of the city, quite distant from each other. I was supposed to give the painters a scale drawing to reproduce, but I did not like the idea of having an intermediary, nor the graphic character that these images usually have, nor the industrial finish. Instead, I thought I would contribute a work that would take into account, in its conception and execution, the inevitable deterioration that the work would suffer. There were four iron planks in each of the two drawings. The lines of the funnel are made up of thin iron rods that would channel the rain that would fall on the planks over the years. Anti-rust paint was applied to the background of the drawing, but not inside the funnel, so that the rust would slowly destroy the planks, dripping and leaving its mark on the wall below. The work remained there for over fifteen years. The sentences are from the Tao philosophy: 'Only nothing penetrates what has no cracks' and 'A knife that is constantly sharpened does not keep its blade for long'.
