A giraffe hesitatingly turns its head to the right, as if scared of the unusual height at which it finds itself. Placed upon a tall stone pedestal, Theresia van der Pant’s Giraf (Giraffe), 1959, reaches new dimensions. It is one of the public sculptures in Utrecht’s municipal collection that German artist Manfred Pernice chose to lift out of its original context in the “old” city and situate in the traffic roundabout that marks the entrance to Leidsche Rijn, a new, still-developing neighborhood. Pernice enhances this temporary gesture by breaking the pavement’s eternal circle with the introduction of two straight train tracks onto the grass at its center. The pedestals upon these tracks become like wagons carrying the sculptures from their normal sites to their current location.
Pernice will change the combination of sculptures every six months, and this feeling of transition links Roulette, 2006, to earlier works whose makeshift character creates fluid meaning. In this case, Pernice deploys Robert Smithson’s “non-site” strategy to turn static, traditional sculptures into mobile structures that force the viewer to think about the function public sculpture can have today.
