The post office building in Aigle, located opposite the train station, is marked by two works of art. Standing before the station eatery is a welcoming bronze sculpture, which looks like a cross between a cheerful fantasy figure and an abstract form. The bronze sculpture by Condé (André Affolter) was commissioned for the building in 1980. Meanwhile, the roof of the building is enthroned by a galloping horse, which the writer Ernest Hemingway once dubbed Cheval d’or (Golden Horse). The horse was made by a French iron smith in the late-19th century and became a landmark for the city of Aigle. It was therefore preserved on the new building, realized in 1980 by the architect Michel-Robert Weber, who was part of the architecture collective L’Atelier des Architectes Associés (AAA). AAA shaped the region’s built landscape through its innovative approach to architecture. Today, however, the structure appears more inconspicuous in its refurbished state.

Sculptor and graphic artist Condé (1920, La Chaux-de-Fonds–2004, Paris) emigrated to Paris in 1946 after years of apprenticeship in La Chaux-de-Fonds. In Paris, he studied with the famous sculptor Germaine Richier, who was an early influence on his work. Condé experimented with a wide variety of materials, including stone, wood, metal, and resins, combining them with his playful vision of sculpture. He was particularly interested in the dialogue between outside and inside, which is also evident in the work Ruissellement (Runoff). In this work, he plays with the contrast between the raw finish of the sculpture’s lower part, reminiscent of a rock, and the polished surface of the upper part, which serves both as a water reservoir and a kind of portal into the interior of the form.

Condé developed the idea for the fountain in Ticino, where he observed water rippling down a rock face but could not locate its source. The origin of the water also remains hidden in Ruissellement. Condé first submitted his project in 1968 in a competition for the post office and railroad building in Villars-sur-Ollon. The jury recommended saving the work for a different context, which presented itself twelve years later in Aigle. In the 1980s, the work was installed in the forecourt, surrounded by lush vegetation. Since the building’s renovation in 2013, the sculpture has stood on a bare concrete square, its function as a fountain deactivated.