FONTAINE DU BASSIN D'APOLLON- PALAIS DU VERSAILLES- PARIS. An artwork by Eduardo Villanueva. This artwork or mischief consist in re-create a simulacrum of a terrorist act without causing serious consequences. The main act consist in throwing a bronze color powder ( a not harmful aniline, solvent and biodegradable) into the water surreptitiously, without anyone noticing and in a clandestine way, inside the Apolo fountain in the Versailles castle in France. Louis XIV, the king called sun, obsessed by its own gardens, formed a very expensive stormwater system, aqueducts, hydraulic fountains and channels that demanded great cunning by engineers to fulfill his whim. Through mimicry, the bronze aniline will paint the water and will form a mirror effect, which will have an impact of melting or dissolution of the sculpture by itself. But the final idea of the piece is to break the image of everyday reality, fulfilling the great fear and obsession of Louis XIV, who was extremely vain and selfish; this will really happen only when the maintenance people of the castle will have to purge and clean the fountain, by this act they will have necessarily to dredge the entire water system. * * * I have done previously two artworks referring to fountains, the first one was in 1998 in Guadalajara, Mexico in the Minerva roundabout, that was about throwing a lot of detergent soap inside the fountain, creating an impact and a fascinating visual effect into the eye of the passerby. The second piece of this kind was made in 2005 in Madrid and Mexico city simultaneously, like a replica kind of a terrorist attack, because both cities have the same roundabout: The Cibeles fountain. The piece was conformed also by the act of throwing some powder into the fountain in a clandestine way, provoking again an hyper-real impact on the passerby; this time was milk powder, so the water become white, making a reference to the milk baths that the goddess Cibeles use to do, trying to do somehow a piece that could heal the wounds of the Spanish people, left behind by the terrorist attack ( 11-M ) in Madrid in 2004. The act was unnoticed and unseen by most of the pople in Madrid because that day the terrorist group ETA put a bomb near the facilities of the art fair of ARCO and drew all the attention of the people, and in Mexico city only a few were aware of the act by night, for reasons of the distinct time zone.
FONTAINE DU BASSIN D'APOLLON- PALAIS DU VERSAILLES- PARIS. An artwork by Eduardo Villanueva. This artwork or mischief consist in re-create a simulacrum of a terrorist act without causing serious consequences. The main act consist in throwing a bronze color powder ( a not harmful aniline, solvent and biodegradable) into the water surreptitiously, without anyone noticing and in a clandestine way, inside the Apolo fountain in the Versailles castle in France. Louis XIV, the king called sun, obsessed by its own gardens, formed a very expensive stormwater system, aqueducts, hydraulic fountains and channels that demanded great cunning by engineers to fulfill his whim. Through mimicry, the bronze aniline will paint the water and will form a mirror effect, which will have an impact of melting or dissolution of the sculpture by itself. But the final idea of the piece is to break the image of everyday reality, fulfilling the great fear and obsession of Louis XIV, who was extremely vain and selfish; this will really happen only when the maintenance people of the castle will have to purge and clean the fountain, by this act they will have necessarily to dredge the entire water system. * * * I have done previously two artworks referring to fountains, the first one was in 1998 in Guadalajara, Mexico in the Minerva roundabout, that was about throwing a lot of detergent soap inside the fountain, creating an impact and a fascinating visual effect into the eye of the passerby. The second piece of this kind was made in 2005 in Madrid and Mexico city simultaneously, like a replica kind of a terrorist attack, because both cities have the same roundabout: The Cibeles fountain. The piece was conformed also by the act of throwing some powder into the fountain in a clandestine way, provoking again an hyper-real impact on the passerby; this time was milk powder, so the water become white, making a reference to the milk baths that the goddess Cibeles use to do, trying to do somehow a piece that could heal the wounds of the Spanish people, left behind by the terrorist attack ( 11-M ) in Madrid in 2004. The act was unnoticed and unseen by most of the pople in Madrid because that day the terrorist group ETA put a bomb near the facilities of the art fair of ARCO and drew all the attention of the people, and in Mexico city only a few were aware of the act by night, for reasons of the distinct time zone.