Four hundred kilos of someone else's radiator, and the gallery finally said yes

Signed the contract today for a room at the old tram depot in Holešovice. Four hundred kilos of salvaged cast-iron radiators, all of them from one demolished panelák block out in Ďáblice, they let me take the lot before the excavator came. I have been chasing this space for two years. Two years of emails that turned into one coffee that turned into nothing, and then out of nowhere the director calls me on a Tuesday and says the spring slot opened up.

I am too old to be this nervous about a signature. My hand was steady, only my handwriting was bad, which is normal.

I keep thinking about the man who let me in the building. He was maybe seventy, wore a tracksuit, did not care at all what I do. I told him I make art from discarded things. He looked at the radiators, looked at me, and asked if I wanted the sinks too. I said yes. Now I have to deal with the sinks.

The whole thing will probably not work. That is the part nobody says out loud. But today it is a yes on paper, and I will take it.

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Mateo Serrano·3w

Four hundred kilos from one block is the part that gets me. Not "salvage" as a look but actually all of it from the same building, so the whole room is carrying one address. That's a decision, not a supply run.

Congrats on the space. Two years of polite emails and then a Tuesday call out of nothing is exactly how it goes, and it never gets less strange. What are you doing with the connections, leaving them on or cutting and welding? I ask because cast iron is a beast I've only touched once and it won that round.

Margaret Hsu·3w

Cutting the original joints is the right instinct but I would think hard before committing to it. Cast iron is unforgiving in a way that is not obvious until it goes: it does not yield, it does not warn you, it simply cracks. If you are welding, preheat the sections properly and let them cool slowly, or you will get a stress fracture you do not see for a month and then find in the worst place. The thread marks are a lovely thing to preserve, but a failed joint is worse than a lost thread.

Tomáš HavelOP·3w

You are right and I know it, which is the annoying part. I have welded enough of this stuff to have the scars, so to speak, and I still find myself wanting to keep a joint because the thread marks are pretty. Pretty is not a reason.

Plan now is preheat, slow cool, and anything structural I bolt instead of weld. The threads I keep are the ones doing no work, purely decorative, so if one of them cracks it is a shame and not a floor. The ones holding weight get cut without ceremony.

Thank you for the warning. It is the kind you only really hear from someone who has already found the crack a month later.

Tomáš HavelOP·3w

Cut and weld, mostly. I keep the original joints where I can, because those thread marks are the only thing left of the block that still remembers being a block. But some of them I have to cut to get the geometry, and I do it slow, with a grinder and a lot of swearing, because cast iron does not forgive a bad decision. You found that out already.

So you lost your round, then. What did it do to you.

Lukas Brandt·3w

The two years of nothing before the Tuesday phone call, that part I recognise. The work is the easy half. Four hundred kilos of cast iron from one block is a real decision though. Do you know yet how they will sit, or is that a thing you find out only in the room? I ask because the weight changes everything once it is in the space, and with radiators you cannot exactly adjust them by an inch. Either way, congratulations. The nerves at the signature are a good sign, not a bad one.

Tomáš HavelOP·3w

You are right about the weight. I have a drawing, and the drawing is a lie I tell the gallery so they sleep at night. Cast iron does not negotiate. You put one down wrong and the whole floor decides the composition for you.

To answer you properly: I know roughly how they sit, in two long banks, but the exact gaps between them I will find out with my hands in the room, in the first two days, when nobody is watching and I can still move things with a crowbar and bad language. After that they stay where they land. That is the honest answer.

And yes, the nerves. I have signed contracts with a steady hand and made bad work. The shaking hand is the one that still cares. Two years of nothing earns you the shiver.