On Sculpting

When I begin a work, I rarely know how it will end. Sometimes a form comes to mind; sometimes it is a texture, a pressure, or simply a direction. More often, I begin with an inclination toward the material—a certain kind of attention, a willingness to listen. I let the work guide me toward what it might become. What I make is therefore less a finished object than an ongoing process.

A brass surface darkens over time. Acid never acts in exactly the same way twice. Sweat alters the surface. Perhaps it is precisely this instability that draws me to material. I am interested in what remains open to change rather than what promises permanence. My works carry the process more than the result.

The marks on a surface are shaped by the humidity of a particular day, the movement of my hand, and the amount of patience I have. I do not think of a work as having a definitive final state. More than what it resembles, it carries traces of how long I waited, how many times I disrupted it, and what I chose to leave unresolved. These traces often remain behind the form. For me, they are where much of the work resides.

Forms change over time—sometimes deliberately, sometimes without my intervention. I do not see this as a break in the work, but as its continuation. What is required is often less mastery than patience: the ability to notice what the material is doing and to remain attentive to it.

This is why my works do not aim for certainty. They resist being contained within a fixed frame or resolved into a single meaning. I am less interested in making something to be looked at than in creating something that can be stayed with. An encounter rather than an answer.

Perhaps this is also why my works do not necessarily resemble one another. What connects them is not their appearance, but the conditions through which they came into being. Each was touched at a different moment, with a different degree of patience. Their relationship is not always visible to the eye. It can sometimes be understood more directly through the hand.

The impermanence of a work gives me a certain freedom: a space in which not everything needs to be completed. Process takes precedence over form. In the end, process may be the only thing that remains constant in my practice.

Material does not always speak clearly. Sometimes it communicates through resistance, through a slight crack, a change in texture, or simply through its refusal to respond. Approaching it requires more than a knowing hand. It requires a body capable of waiting.

This is why I often become quiet when I begin working. I wait. I try to understand where the material is pulling me. This is not passive patience. It is a form of attentive accompaniment.

Before intervening on a surface, I stop. Before making a mark, I touch it with my finger. I know that if I press too hard, something may break; if I move too quickly, something may be lost. Material does not always answer immediately. It has its own rhythm, and I have to adjust myself to it.

For me, this becomes a kind of ethics—not a set of rules, but an awareness of distance. When should I intervene? When should I leave something alone? Respecting the limits of the material can become more important than my desire to shape it. Every intervention carries a responsibility. At a certain point, choosing not to act can be more difficult than acting.

Some days I do nothing. The material does not seem ready to be touched, and I step back. This withdrawal may be one of the quietest and most significant moments in the process. The work does not depend only on my readiness. There has to be a mutual readiness between the material and myself.

I have also learned that material does not always need to speak. Sometimes it simply remains silent. That silence is part of the work. An empty area of a surface, an absent line, an unfinished form—all of these can be meaningful without needing to be resolved. I have had to learn not to demand an answer.

Sometimes finishing a work means simply taking my hand away.

What happens afterward belongs to time. At that point, the work becomes more than its form. It becomes the distances, pauses, decisions and refusals that allowed that form to exist.

Perhaps this is why my works often feel less finished than left open. They stop at a certain point, carrying their absences as much as their excesses, their silences as much as their marks. The process continues through both making and choosing not to make.

I do not try to make my work stand in for something else. I am not interested in explaining or illustrating. Sculpture does not need a language as direct as words. It has its own language, one that can exist through silence.

A surface is, at first, simply a surface. But when a hand remains attentive to it—when there has been time, touch and waiting—something else begins to emerge. This is not representation. It is an encounter: a space in which meaning is not imposed but allowed to form.

I think of sculpture not as something that tells, but as something that asks us to remain with it. With a void, a form, a texture, a weight. It may not immediately settle into any clear meaning. Sometimes it settles nowhere. It can simply remain there, like silence. And when we ask what it means, there may be no answer.

My works are made from this position. They do not represent a figure, nor do they attempt to illustrate a concept. They may register a tendency, a rupture, a pressure, a hesitation. Sometimes this appears as oxidation, sometimes as a depression in the surface, sometimes as nothing more than an edge I have deliberately left untouched.

I do not want the work simply to show something. I want it to occupy a place and remain there on its own terms. Someone may approach it, stop, stay for a while, or simply pass by. The work continues to exist within these movements.

This is why silence matters to me. The work does not always need to speak, and neither does the viewer. Some encounters happen through proximity, through attention, through the way a body stands in relation to an object.

Perhaps this is why I would not say that my works have a language. They have a state of becoming. They are not always easy to define, but they can be sensed.

In this sense, sculpture holds time rather than words. It stretches a moment and asks attention to remain. For me, the absence of representation creates a space in which this time can unfold. I do not want to tell or teach. I stand there with the work—with the material, with the silence.

Time in sculpture does not end with the act of making. Material continues to change: it darkens, cracks, dulls, oxidizes. Everything I do to it, as well as everything that happens to it without me, leaves a trace over time. These traces are not merely visual effects. They are records of touch, repetition, waiting, intervention and withdrawal.

Every surface carries a memory. Which tool was used, how many times it was used, where I stopped, where I changed direction, where I gave up—all of these decisions remain embedded in the form. This is what I look for in my work: not a resolved image, but the residue of a process.

Touch, then, is more than physical contact. The traces accumulated through touch are also records of a way of thinking. I can remember, without consciously recalling it, how many times I have handled a material, how much pressure I applied, and for how long. The memory of the hand works differently from the memory of the mind.

Sculpture carries this memory without fully revealing it. It does not offer the viewer a direct narrative. Instead, it leaves behind the residue of a process. Each mark suggests something that was attempted, abandoned, repeated, or allowed to continue.

In this sense, sculpture remains open to time. It carries its past within the history of its making, while remaining exposed to what has not yet happened. Its relationship with the viewer is therefore not limited to the visual encounter of a single moment. It also depends on everything that accumulates around the work over time.

How a work ages matters. The environment in which it exists, how it is handled, transported, maintained, touched, or even forgotten can all alter it. These things become part of its history and can change how the work is understood.

When material is allowed to remain open to such transformations, sculpture is no longer a static object. It becomes something that continues to live.

This is why I do not necessarily remove irregularities, cracks, oxidation, or other traces of time from my works. I see them not as imperfections to be corrected, but as evidence of a process and, ultimately, of a way of living.