Ulysses and the Windskin

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Art · Subcategory: Sculpture · Year: 1988 · Authors: Máximo Riol

Together with the Windskin and the conceptual evolutions of El Bosque de Egeria , this "double" monument [the whereabouts of the second piece, weighing more than 250 kg, is unknown] set on the summit of one of the historic cliffs of the city of Las Palmas [San Juan Battery] represents the neo-mythological aspect of the sculptor. The man, Ulysses, acts through the vertical sculpture, resting on a truncated pyramid base. This first piece of the monument is an extrapolation of Homo , which, besides the degraded void located approximately at the height of the human head, has another cut that sections part of the plates. The second piece dominates a square concrete capital and refers us to the figure of the windswell windskin. Aeolus, King of the Winds, takes pity on Ulysses and to facilitate his maritime return to Ithaca traps the contrary winds in an animal skin that he gifts to the hero. The void described by the cuts is made from the lower base. Riol opposes the harmonious rectangle of Ulysses with the perfect cube of the windskin. The myth is thus imprinted in steel. We must mention the ideal setting of the sculpture, which has the sky as its background. After the remodelling of the square where the monument was installed, one of the pieces has been lost, thus preventing the full reading and conceptual reach of Ulysses and the Windskin which we can only know through photographic reference.

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