Labyrinth of Flesh (Minotaur)

Description

This sculpture in 300-year-old olive wood is not just an abstract composition but a metaphorical reconstruction of the myth of the Minotaur, in which material and form become bearers of tragedy and duality. The artist did not create a ready-made form — he ‘released’ the image laid down by nature itself.

In the plasticity of the wood one can discern the anatomy of the mythical creature confined in the body of a bull. The complex, curved silhouette, especially in its massive left part, recalls the tense, mighty neck and withers of a bull. The smooth, deliberately ‘melted’ forms create the illusion of heavy musculature ready to lunge. Yet this brute force flows into graceful, almost fragile bridges pierced with voids.

The through openings and intricate cut-outs in the structure of the wood become a direct allusion to the Labyrinth of Knossos. Unlike the rigid geometry of stone, this labyrinth is organic and natural. Negative space here plays the role of passages and dead ends in which the gaze can lose itself.
Olive wood, with its unique velvety pattern and deep, vein-like streaks, conveys the corporeality of the myth perfectly.

The dynamics of the sculpture, especially in its horizontal development, create a sense of continuous movement. On the one hand, it is the triumphant, wild dance of a bull tearing its bonds. On the other — an agony, a body writhing in torment, torn apart by the wind of time.
This work is an existential sculpture in which the Minotaur sheds his monstrous concreteness and becomes a universal symbol of a soul torn by contradictions, forever locked in its own body-labyrinth.

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