Frabel's "Hammer and Nails" still touring the world

The "Hammer and Nails" sculpture, created by Hans Godo Frabel is currently on Exhibition at the Katonah Museum in New York as part of The Hechinger Collection, starting January 14th until April 1, 2007.

Tools have empowered human beings since the early Stone Age. The Hechinger Collection celebrates the mundane tool - the hammer, the saw, the rake, the paintbrush – as a point of departure for the creation of artworks that are at once beautiful, surprising, and sometimes humorous. The exhibition suggests new ways to look at these utilitarian objects, highlighting the artist’s act of creation and emphasizing the simple point that artists utilize tools – sometimes fashioned by themselves – to produce artworks. The collection offers a broad range of relationships between tools and art: tools can be a metaphor for creation, for labor, and for art. Tools as Art is also a time capsule, documenting changes in means of production – from hand labor to industrialized assembly to computer-generated output.

The Hechinger Collection came into being in 1978 when the hardware industry pioneer John Hechinger found that his new company headquarters in Landover, Maryland, was efficient but sterile. To counteract this lack of soul, Hechinger began collecting art that focused on the company’s very livelihood and exhibited it throughout the building to inspire employees.

For more information, please visit: www.katonahmuseum.org