Crafting an artwork

In this film, Swiss artist Vanessa Billy invites us to follow the journey to create three new sculptures. Watch the complex craft of bronze-casting in collaboration with the art foundry Kunstbetrieb.

Entitled ‘Fallen Suns’, the works take the form of enlarged lemons, a changeable shape she has worked with for more than 10 years. “What attracted me originally to the lemon was the idea of using a natural element that recalls the human body, while simultaneously suggesting a relation to the sun and energy,” she says.

A first for the artist, Vanessa Billy was involved in the whole making process. “With bronze, it is an incredibly complex process, because there are so many steps,” she adds. Here, the specialist and time-consuming process is captured in its entirety – from creating the wax model to pouring the fluorescent molten bronze and ultimately the finishing process.

“This is the most exciting but also difficult moment, as you have a metal that is more than 1,000 degrees hot right in front of you, and you can feel it,” says Rahel Sarasin about the pour. One of the craft specialists at the Kunstbetrieb, Rahel walks us through the steps of the centuries old craft. 

While the wax copy would usually be cast in its completed form, the artist and foundry experts took an experimental approach to morph the shape before casting – creating an effect of a “squeezed” lemon. “Understanding the technical possibilities and how to execute them is very important. But I think the most important thing is curiosity. You’re constantly learning and progressing,” says Raphaël Schmid, a project manager and art founder at the Kunstbetrieb.

Open to the public, the works are displayed for the first time in the UBS Art Studio at Art Basel in Basel 2024. Discover more about this year’s edition of the fair hereClick here on this years edition link.