Armando, alle beelden (all sculptures)

Armando made his first bronze sculpture in 1988, a long arm measuring over a metre. It was the beginning of a series of around 174 different works in bronze that, with intervals, have enriched his oeuvre until today. The form of the image is striking. The arm is not a natural representation of an arm: thicker and thinner parts alternate to form the crude shape of an arm, which thanks to the presence of fingers, can be recognised as such.

The method Armando uses in his images is unique. It is the search for a balance between recognisable and unrecognisable images, a balance between the personal and the general, between the physical and the mental, and representing this. He does this through blurring personal, recognisable elements so that they become widely understandable. The only way to achieve this with bronze is to play with the surface definition.

This method can be seen everywhere in his work, from his texts that never quite reach a conclusion, his use of grainy Nazi propaganda films whereby running people in a landscape are insufficiently identifiable as conqueror or conquered, the paintings that suggest movement by painting them as a photographer ‘out of focus’ and finally his bronze sculptures that have more or less the same approach.

Armando, all sculptures provides a total overview of the art of sculpture within Armando’s oeuvre, beginning with his first untitled art installation in the Stedelijk Museum in 1955 up to and including his most recent work.