El Callao Fountain

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Art · Subcategory: Sculpture · Year: 1989 · Authors: Tony Gallardo

To contemplate the Gran Callao that centres the fountain of the roundabout strategically located at the main entrance of the Port of La Luz is simply to see existence in the round. [...] You see the callao, graceful but not insolent, humble but not humiliated, like our way of being; erected on its pedestal immersed in water up to the ankles; with its toothed crest or its veiled face, depending on how and from where you look at it; its wet back or its swollen belly, dripping; you see the wide basin of the fountain with the gentle cascade flowing between slabs of subtle hues and attenuated relief; you see the surroundings of tabaibas, dragon trees, native plants thirsty from the aridity; in the background the familiar silhouette of the Isleta volcano and on the other side the ships; and what turns, the traffic, the jumble of the feverish port activity. But you also see around you what has life; you see everywhere how water springs from the fountain, life; but this life barely touches you. It is like a fine water that seems not to wet. You feel independent of this life to a certain extent, and in that independence the sculptor bases his spatiality. There is a kind of distance that separates you while at the same time unites you to this life. There are always in front of you, contemplating this sculpture, different superimposed planes that create a no-man's land, in whose strip your activity and your life can expand in full freedom. You feel comfortable, you feel, like the water that flows through the fountain, free. There is no immediate contact between your self and the surrounding becoming. Your contact with this becoming is effected above, on the surface of the water rippled by the breeze and with the help of a veil, a mist, that unites your self to the other.

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