Consigne à vie, Bronze sculpture at Saint-Lazare Station, Paris, France

Consigne à vie is a sculpture by Arman made of an accumulation of bronze suitcases, installed in the Cour de Rome of the Gare Saint-Lazare in Paris. The dark, slightly glossy cases are stacked unevenly, each with handles, ribs and corner reinforcements, some facing outward and others turned sideways so their edges jut from the mass. The pile widens at its base and narrows toward an irregular top where boxes tilt at angles against the sky.

Consigne à vie was made by Arman in 1985 as a public commission from the French state, through the Ministry of Culture and Communication's Centre national des arts plastiques, and installed that same year in the Cour de Rome of the Gare Saint-Lazare. Arman, born in 1928 and dead in 2005, was a signatory of the constitutive declaration of Nouveau Réalisme. A second Arman work, L'Heure de tous, stands in the station's Cour du Havre.

Arman, a signatory of the Nouveau Réalisme manifesto, built the piece from cast-bronze suitcases, the everyday and sentimental objects he collected and piled up throughout his career. The title plays on the French consigne, the station's left-luggage office: luggage checked for life. A second Arman work, L'Heure de tous, stands in the Cour du Havre of the same station.

Consigne à vie stands in the Cour de Rome, the courtyard on the station's west side, not on the front facade. Enter the Cour de Rome from Rue de Rome or from inside the station; the stack of bronze cases rises among the passing travellers. A second Arman work, L'Heure de tous, is in the neighbouring Cour du Havre.

Arman signed the founding declaration of Nouveau Réalisme, a movement that called for a return to reality; his habit of piling up everyday, familiar and sentimental objects gave the work its form. A second Arman piece, L'Heure de tous, stands in the Cour du Havre of the same station.