Solar Plexus

This desert landscape relief reveals a labor-intensive process of layering fragments of cardboard, masking tape, and fabric. Cardboard, a perishable and inexpensive material, is associated with states of transition and carries an inherent quality of impermanence. These qualities seem to contradict the essence of relief sculpture, one of the oldest sculptural techniques known, with archaeological findings that have endured tens of thousands of years. The cardboard in this work is torn and crumpled; its layers have been separated and reassembled through a prolonged, physical process. The sculpted image depicts the desert, not a specific one, but rather a symbol of an eternal space, present as if outside of time. A symbol of wandering journeys, solitude and contemplation, silence and non-doing. A line is thus drawn between labor and pause, between industry and the natural environment, between transience and eternity. The final layer of the relief is made of soft cotton fabric, cut into strips resembling gauze bandages that wrap, mend, and unify the torn cardboard. Left in its natural color, the fabric hues the landscape in tones of stone and marble, echoing traditional reliefs, yet also evoking shrouds. These complete a cycle of transformation and suggest a movement toward the reconciliation of opposites.​