TheCounterbalance
2024
Welded steel, oxidised finish, incandescent light
N° 002 / 019
Everything that stands upright is in negotiation with collapse. The Counterbalance does not pretend otherwise. It makes the negotiation visible. Two legs spread wide against a floor they barely touch. One arm reaching so far upward it should pull the whole form down. And a single light hanging from the peak, small and warm, as if fragility were the point.
It is not trying to look stable. It is demonstrating what stability actually costs. The light does not illuminate the sculpture. It illuminates the tension holding it together.
N°01
N°02Studio note
Alberto Palomino — Montréal, May 2024
The Counterbalance started as a structural problem I refused to solve conventionally. A form that tall, that sharp, held by two points that thin — every engineer I consulted said it couldn't stand. I spent three months proving that it could. The suspended bulb was not planned. One afternoon I hung a light from the highest point to see the shadows it would cast. I never took it down. It became the third element the piece had been missing: the weight that makes the tension visible.