Fabric of Time

Description

I did not immediately understand what I was holding. The trunk of an old olive tree is usually twisted, but this one was twisted as though the same mass of wood had wound around its own axis several times before finally setting — like fabric crumpled in a fist, then released, no longer able to return to a flat plane.

There is no single line here that the eye could follow from base to summit. Below, the form is dense, almost monolithic — a heavy knot drawn in on itself. Higher up it opens into lacy arches and openings that pass all the way through, as though the same fabric had been pulled taut in one place and left slack in another. This transition from weight to air was already present in the trunk — all I had to do was trust it and not get in its way.

The wavy, tangled grain of the wood heightens this sensation: the line of the growth rings disappears into the form in one place and unexpectedly surfaces in another, so that its path can never be traced in full. I walk around the sculpture in circles, and each time I see a different fold of the knot — no single angle reveals the whole at once; there is always only a fragment, and the rest must be held in memory rather than in sight.

It seems to me that this is how time itself is built — not a line, but dense, many-layered matter, where everything happens at once, only invisible from any single vantage point. This sculpture, like time, cannot be taken in with a single glance — it can only be walked around, turn by turn.

Additional information