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You come across them drawn or painted: simple V-signs representing flying birds. The enormous red V by Rotterdam sculptor Ineke Visser is reminiscent of such a bird. Yet the sculpture should be seen differently. The two steel pillars of the 8-ton sculpture on Weteringkade near the Schenk Viaduct represent the link between the Rivierenbuurt and the Stationswijk.

The approximately 12-metre high sculpture from 1988 is a 'landmark', a marker of a place in the city where the two neighbourhoods meet. It is large, painted in the signal colour red and has a simple form to draw attention to itself in a busy environment. Traffic rushes past the object on two sides. Moreover, it has to compete with road signs, lampposts and tram overhead wires. Such a location calls for a grand gesture.

Visser's work has a monumental character. When she was at the beginning of her career and worked mainly in small formats, this was already being noticed. In 1976 she received the Godon prize, an incentive grant for beginning artists from The Hague's Royal Academy of Art. The jury found that she 'intelligently and economically applied material in practice'. Furthermore, the jury said to Visser: 'Your work is eligible to be executed on a larger scale and to be placed in the open air or in urban environments'. Especially the latter happened.

There are sculptures by Visser in various large cities such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. They are often sturdy steel constructions, robust and strong. Occasionally, however, they have something fragile about them. The bend in the top of the 'wings' of Visser's sculpture in The Hague makes the sculpture less inviolable.