Bo Ek

The renowned Swedish art historian, museum director, and curator Pontus Hulten was also active as an artist in the 1950s. Under the pseudonym Bo Ek, Hulten contributed to Edition MAT his Kugelspiel, a chance-based, motor-driven sculpture first created in 1955 from a deconstructed alarm clock. He described to Daniel Spoerri how to make additional versions of the work as a multiple: “Take a precision-made Swiss alarm clock…; throw away all the parts like the case and so on, until all that is left is the tension spring and two or three cog wheels that lead to the balance spring. Then attach… elements to the spring and wind up the clock. The result is exactly the opposite of what one normally expects from a clock: an imprecise, liberated and chance motion.” Two black Ping-Pong balls are attached to two steel wires at the end of the balance spring. When set in motion the balls shake and bounce, turning into, as one critic put it, “champion boxers who suddenly pause, relax, and start slugging away again.” Hulten’s experimentation with kineticism was directly informed by the work of his close friend Jean Tinguely as well as that of such artists as Marcel Duchamp and Bruno Munari. He embraced their shared skepticism toward technology, epitomized by their “functionless” machines, which Hulten saw as “a latent threat to all established order, a symbol of an immense freedom.”

Image credit

Bo Ek (Pontus Hulten) (Swedish, 1924–2006), Kugelspiel (Ball game), 1955. Ring gear, iron rod, clockwork, wire, and celluloid balls, ed. 5, 29 15/16 x 18 1/8 x 5 1/2 in. (76 x 45 x 14 cm). Original model for Edition MAT, 1959/1960. Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Germany. Photo © Kunstmuseen Krefeld–Volker Döhne–ARTOTHEK.