“I can’t explain the origin of the image. I’ve had it in mind for so long. I sometimes connect it with my very first memories of Italy, even before I started school,” explains Herz. The work is a silo of cement rings with a construction-site ladder sticking out of the top. A displaced and disquieting object. A new building in an archeological site? Or is it too a remnant of the past? Why is the ladder inside and hence unusable? The work recalls In Erwartung der Ernte (Awaiting the Harvest). Commissioned by a road construction company and produced at Engen-Welschingen, it constitutes a parody of public sculpture. Herz installed three ladders in a field, each one near a pear tree. They are like those used for harvesting but made of steel and anchored to the ground. The image is paradoxical. Like Jacob’s ladder, Herz’s ladders lead up to the heavens. They are useless because they do not reach the trees. They may reach them when they have, hopefully, grown