The relationship between stones and sky might have been observed from the
early times of humanity and stone carving has always been spiritually related to
the celestial activity.
In the “Sculptor” project, the ancient activity of stone carving, that consists in the
controlled removal of stone material (clear evidence of some form of stone work
can be found even in the earliest societies), is put forward in an attempt to observe and reinforce the intense physical and mental labor of such work.
Until recently celestial maps showed allegorical figures which encompassed
the imagination of people, related to the form the constellations were perceived
from different regions of the planet. “The Sculptor” was created by NicolasLouis de Lacaille, a French astronomer, originally as “L’Atelier du sculpteur”
(Apparatus sculptoris), situated on the southern sky. It was shortened in 1845
to “Sculptor”.
The transposition of the “Sculptor” constellation into a large granite stone, remembering a meteorite, is a process of restitution using ancestral sculpting
methods: drilling, cutting, breaking. This process is also reminding the fact that
each stone potentially contains an infinity of forms and that only the creator (the
Sculptor) can reveal one or more of them, and the rest is transformed into dust.
The rock, the plans, the map schemes, the tools and rock remains can be seen
through the perspective of knowledge or the intuitive sense of understanding.
The different perspective and perception of the sculpting action and process,
in time and space, facilitate new meaning and purpose, expanding the field of
‘here and there’ and narrowing it in the same time.
Sculpture as an artifact can connect imaginary and materiality, inducing the
idea that everything is made out of stardust - a scientific, philosophical and
poetical debate.
The strange feeling of looking in the past as well as in the future, through Astronomy and Astrology, of star observation is why we are still fascinated by the
wildly unknown cosmos. Prehistoric megalith observatories, menhirs, dolmens
or cromlechs reveal the importance of astronomical observation in all societies,
a fatal topic important no matter of time and energy, limitations or even human
life costs.
The work is looking at this from a contemporary perspective, in the search for a
meaning, realizing the crisis of the rational intellect, with the belief that all mysteries can be understood through rational reasons and scientific methods - an
idea introduced by Galilei.