Wheel No. 6 "The Crown" Sculpture

The Wheel Series 2000-2018 All Sculptures in this series are made out of ONE Iron wheel by cutting and bending only without adding or subtracting or welding any material its only made from the original wheel. The Wheel Series emphasis the ability of creativity in its artistic form to unable endless possibilities within limitations and not as an opposite option for limitation. It’s a unique artistic method that was recognized by Arturo Schwarz Who wrote: …. A subclass of the readymade, greatly utilized by the Surrealists, is the found object (objet trouvé). But there is something ironic about putting Raffael’s wheel in this category, because; these metal wheels are far from being just found objects, which once belonged to agricultural machinery no longer used today; finding these wheels, which have become increasingly rare and are in the process of disappearing completely, requires a patient, painstaking search. Once found, Lomas must alter their original condition to transform them into what Duchamp termed a “Rectified Readymade.” What was important for Lomas was to use the wheel as an integral whole. Nothing was to be added or subtracted, just as nothing can be added to or subtracted from the Universe. Lomas obeys one of the precepts of Sanskrit poetics, namely, that the task of the artist is to “throw new light on visible nature" Thus, only through a subtle exercise of cutting and bending, was the wheel – which becomes, for Lomas, a metaphor of the universe – to assume a totally different aspect. This involved dismantling, which meant having to deal with two very important concepts. First, that which concerns the rim, i.e. the limit, the border, the inside and the outside; second, that of the center, which meant dismantling it while acknowledging that when it is hollow it is all the more powerful, since it is there that the movement occurs – as written by Lao Tzu: “The thirty spokes unite in the one nave; but it is on the empty space for the axle, that the use of the wheel depends"….. From Raffael Lomas: the Screw and the Wheel, Even 2008))