Buggies

Toni Schmale’s steel and concrete sculptures often evoke associations with machines and apparatuses that have a purpose, like torture devices, fitness equipment, or even combine harvesters. They are a collage of different machines, put together to form something new. It feels like the sculpture could be capable of something, but the object itself makes no suggestion as to what action might be required. Schmale’s enigmatic creations really only come alive through the viewer’s fertile imagination. The “buggies” the artist crafted from steel remnants found in her Vienna studio vividly demonstrate the creative and inventive potential of seemingly worthless found materials.