2025

Stump

object
The work Stump is a sculptural object composed of four fragments of a tree trunk, mounted on thin metal rods that hold the wood slightly above the ground. The fragments appear heavy and unstable, as if the rods might not sustain their weight, yet the structure remains firmly fixed. The wood is painted white, and at its center a circular void is clearly visible — an opening that once connected the fragments into a single whole, but now no longer holds them together.
The material for the work originates from a tree that the artist found more than ten years ago, during his school years. Only part of that original trunk is used in this object; other fragments remain unused and may reappear in future works. In this sense, Stump is a completed project, but also a partial extraction from a longer temporal continuum.
A tree stump is a physical record of time. Annual rings usually allow us to read age, growth, droughts, and interruptions. In this object, however, the center — the point from which the structure once expanded — is removed. What remains is the periphery: the outer layers, closer to the present, while the inner history is absent. The void functions as a sign of loss rather than absence of meaning — a biography that cannot be fully reconstructed because its origin has been extracted rather than erased.
The work proposes a physical interpretation of time not as accumulation, but as displacement. Stability is no longer produced by a central core; instead, the structure depends on external supports. This shift introduces a political dimension: the hollowed center evokes questions of centralization, dependence, and the extraction of resources. The removed core recalls colonial and economic models in which value is taken from a center that once held the structure together, leaving behind a peripheral body that must rely on artificial systems of support.