The Art Foundry

Under the Shanghai sun, a team of workers, aided by a crane, assembles an Urs Fischer sculpture. They are tense. The scale of the colossal work they are dealing with requires great precision from the engineers, so that its constituent parts - four bronze casts, each the size of a boulder - hold together and do not collapse. They scramble over the sculpture, making painstaking adjustments as the pieces are slowly moved into place. Eventually, Fischer's modernist behemoth attains its intended proportions, towering above its creators. Looking at it, one would never guess its origins. "It's based on a small lump of clay, that Fischer produced in about 15 seconds", reveals Foundry worker Christian Meier. It's a similar story for all of the sculptures made on the site; they begin life as artists' models or sketches, which the team at the Foundry then transform into monumental artworks. Since the early days, when, Lehman jokes, they resembled "scrap metal dealers", they have managed to garner a roster of clients that includes the biggest names in the modern art world.