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It is often said that the (inter)nationally renowned sculptor Auke de Vries was originally a graphic artist and drawer. In order to make a link with his graphic-looking sculptures. But De Vries painted for ten years before he started sculpting in the late seventies. And although he makes sketches from which a sculpture later arises, his thin sculptures have more to do with nature than with art. Moreover, by no means all his sculptures can be called linear. Some even have quite a lot of mass.

In 1986, for instance, De Vries made an elongated sculpture at The Hague's Hollands Spoor railway station, defying the laws of nature. On an illogically narrow strip between the former PTT Post shipping centre and the railway line stand strips and sheets of metal, curled, cut out, almost falling, but still just in balance. Lead-heavy forms seem feather-light. Here, De Vries proved that flat can be quite plastic.

De Vries' sculpture for the Sculpture Gallery is also an example of the acrobatics of line and mass. The sculpture is composed of thin, black rods that are reminiscent of drawn charcoal lines. The dented aluminium form resembles a crumpled bag of crisps without prints. It catches the light, while gravity does not seem to apply to the wooden ball, which is inconspicuously attached to one of the rods. The pedestal, which De Vries makes part of the sculpture, provides the necessary mass.

Although De Vries' sculptures are abstract, they do contain recognisable forms. Like the ball and the arrow in his pedestal sculpture. However, what matters to him is not the meaning, but the aesthetic quality of these forms and the tension they create in conjunction with the abstract figures. His art is a refined, intuitive game in space.