At Rudolfskai on the right bank of the Salzach River, Manfred Wakolbinger's Connection sits in the narrow gap between the medieval city wall and the water: an eleven-metre polished steel wave that curves open and lets you walk inside it. The piece belongs to Salzburg's Walk of Modern Art and has been on permanent public display since 2011.
The Story
Wakolbinger trained as a toolmaker before studying sculpture, and the metalworking background shows in everything he makes. Steel is not decoration in his hands: it is structure, material, and idea at once. Connection was commissioned in 2011 as part of the Walk of Modern Art, a programme that places major contemporary works permanently in Salzburg's public spaces. He chose Rudolfskai precisely because of the tension in the site: ancient fortification wall on one side, the moving river on the other, a sliver of urban space that most people pass through without stopping.
The wave was modelled digitally and then fabricated from forty-eight cast steel nodes, each shaped and welded before the completed form was craned into position. Its polished exterior mirrors the city wall, the river, and the faces of people who stop to look. Step inside and the reflection inverts: you see the surrounding city bent and compressed in curved steel, the Altstadt visible in miniature on the inner surface.
The Wurth Group purchased the work and placed it on permanent public loan, ensuring it stays in situ as part of the city's fabric. The piece asks a simple question that the site makes unavoidable: what connects the medieval and the contemporary, the wall and the water, the stone and the steel?
