Fabric of Time

Description

Knot of Time: A Handcarved Abstract Olive Wood Sculpture

I didn’t immediately understand what I was holding. An old olive trunk is usually twisted, but this one was twisted as if the same mass of wood had wound around its own axis several times before settling — like fabric crumpled in a fist, then released, unable to return to a flat plane.

From Weight to Air

There’s no single line the eye can follow from base to top. Lower down, the form is dense, almost monolithic — a heavy knot pulled into itself. Higher up, it opens into lacy arches and open loops, as if the same fabric had been pulled tight in one place and left slack in another. This shift from weight to air was already there in the trunk — I only had to trust it and stay out of its way.

A Grain That Can’t Be Traced Whole

The wavy, tangled wood grain deepens this feeling: the line of the growth rings disappears into the form in one place and unexpectedly resurfaces in another, so its path can never be traced in full. Walking around the sculpture, I see a different fold of the knot each time — no single angle reveals the whole at once, only a fragment, and the rest has to be held in memory rather than in sight.

Time as Layered Matter

I think this is how time works too — not a line, but a dense, layered matter where everything happens at once, only invisible from any single point of view. Like time itself, this handcarved abstract olive wood sculpture can’t be taken in with one glance — it can only be walked around, turn by turn.

Additional information

Weight	13 kg
Dimensions	50 × 48 × 84 cm
Artist	Hanko
Material	Solid olive root.
Year	2024
Series	Transformations
Edition	1/1 — unique work
Technique	Hand carving, polishing, mirror finishing
Aesthetics	biomorphism, surrealist abstraction

Reviews (0)