‘Four Guardians', 2002, Sculpture Garden Frans de Wit, Singelpark, Leiden
“Scrap is not made by me, not my choice of shape [...] it has its own energy. It was red hot, like a kind of dough.' Frans de Wit
‘Four Guardians’ (2002) was created concurrently with ‘Five Sculptures on One Curve’ (1996-2002) at Naturalis, with the same visual language. According to De Wit some pieces of the compressed ship scrap metal was so inherently beautiful that they can be put upon a pedestal straight away. De Wit welded some of those pieces together and created sculptures that appear like quiet whimsical creatures standing guard. In the Sculpture Garden it looks like they are growing out of the soil as a plant. When De Wit made the sculptures, he also designed a square pedestal for each Guardian to stand on. It should not appear that they emerge out of the ground, but the landscapers accidently covered the pedestals in 2020 when installing them in the sculpture garden.
The ‘Four Guardians’ were exhibited in 2002 at Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden.