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In Costa Rican parlance, the chonco is the final stub of a pencil worn down to the point of awkwardness, that meager remnant held onto stubbornly while it can still muster a final stroke. Alexander Chaves takes this tiny, everyday scrap and translates it into the impassive monumentality of marble. By petrifying in stone an implement whose very nature is to wear away and vanish, the sculpture upends the logic of the utilitarian object: the disposable gains a stately presence, and the fragility of graphite yields to stony permanence.

The carving resolves each anatomical section of the object with sharp precision. The shaft retains its hexagonal facets, evoking wood shaved down by hand or pocketknife, while the rear terminal reveals the incised cylindrical ridges of the metal ferrule and the rounded dome of the eraser, all executed in a unified, fine-grained white marble. The tip introduces an uncompromising visual break: a dark, matte cone with a carbon-like quality that replicates sharpened lead yet remains stubbornly mineral, incapable of wearing down or transferring pigment onto paper. Light skims smoothly across the polished planes, bringing out the purity of the volume and sharpening the contrast between the luminosity of the barrel and the dense opacity of the apex.

Removed from its ordinary handheld scale and endowed with undeniable solidity, the piece operates as a tribute to the draughtsman's craft, the toil of physical labor, and the accumulation of creative hours. A lucid irony emerges in using a chisel to carve the very instrument traditionally employed to sketch sculptures on paper. The pencil is no longer a means to project a form, but has become the final form in itself.