Barrio Escalante, San José

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Ficha C-G8, by Alexander Chaves. The shift in scale defines the immediate impact of this sculpture: raising a playing piece to nearly three meters in height completely disrupts the physical and spatial relationship with the viewer.
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Alexander Chaves

Ficha C-G8Inquire about availability

Year
2014
Technique
Painted Metal
Dimensions
280 × 140 × 140 cm
Status
Inquire about availability
Palette
deep black, anthracite, lead gray, steel gray
Brushwork
Sheet metal welded in faceted planes with a uniform satin paint finish.

Curatorial analysis

The shift in scale defines the immediate impact of this sculpture: raising a playing piece to nearly three meters in height completely disrupts the physical and spatial relationship with the viewer. What fits between two fingers on a chessboard is transformed here into a resolute totem, a monolithic volume of painted metal asserting its presence through faceted planes and rigorously sharp cuts. Chaves synthesizes the horse's physiognomy into pronounced ridges and smooth surfaces, stripping the animal figure of all superfluous anatomical anecdote or ornament to concentrate on the geometric purity of the silhouette and its weight upon the ground.

Natural light falls across the dark surface, revealing a complex modulation of shadows and subdued highlights. Rather than behaving as an opaque and homogeneous block, the satin finish of the metal responds to the environment by crisply outlining the frontal ridge of the bridge, the dramatic concavity of the eye sockets, and the clean perforations of the nostrils. These voids, excavated directly into the metal plate, function as zones of impenetrable shadow that return a blind and enigmatic gaze. The sturdy neck, firmly anchored atop an impeccably fabricated cylindrical pedestal, supports the subtle torsion of the head with the restrained tension of a sentinel on perpetual guard.

Under an alphanumeric title that immediately evokes the notation of a move or square on a chessboard, the piece hovers between the apparent lightness of a playful maneuver and the sheer force of a commemorative monument. There is an archaic solemnity in its upright, hieratic posture, reminiscent of zoomorphic idols or ancient funerary stelae, yet continually tempered by the industrial precision of the cutting and assembly. By depriving the horse of mane, musculature, and organic gaze, the volume establishes itself as pure volumetric architecture, an artifact that measures its power against the surrounding space and suggests that any game, magnified to this colossal scale, takes on the gravity of a decisive confrontation.

Ficha C-G8

More works by Alexander Chaves

33 works

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