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Between the trams and the façades in the busy centre of The Hague stands an unreal primal landscape. Like an icon of the unspoilt in a built-up world of stone. The aluminium sculpture with its tall, capped spires is by sculptor Adam Colton. Statue and plinth form a whole, while the surface treatment of the two parts is completely different: the rock is rough, the plinth smoothly polished.

The sculpture is a sequel to a series of strange sculptures of white stoneware and porcelain, which Colton presented in 1994 at the Art & Project gallery in Slootdorp. Compared to the pedestal sculpture of two years later, these sculptures have less height. They look like highly eroded mountain spires or the teeth from the excavated teeth of a dinosaur.

This work shows that nature is Colton's source of inspiration. By nature, however, he also means his own arms and legs. From the early 1980s onwards, Colton made detailed line drawings and sculptures based on three-dimensional patterns of these body parts. At first glance, these drawings and sculptures show similarities to architecture and architectural models. The same applies to the cube-like sculptures created after 1985. Nevertheless, these geometric forms can also be traced back to the spatial analysis of organic curves in a skull, for example. Colton often opens up his abstract sculptures. This not only makes the internal structure visible, but also makes it clear how the inside and outside relate to each other.

Colton does not strive for a precise reproduction of his observations of nature and space. While sketching, he transforms the forms of his subject. As a result, it is not always clear where the final image originated. This also applies to this sculpture in the sculpture gallery.