Barrio Escalante, San José

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La Cruz Del Buey, by Alexander Chaves. The horizontal beam makes no attempt to disguise its functional origin: it is an agrarian yoke whose hollows, carved to fit the necks of draft animals, here outline the arms of a cross.
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Alexander Chaves

La Cruz Del BueyInquire about availability

Year
2015
Technique
Art Object
Dimensions
80 × 80 × 20 cm
Status
Inquire about availability
Palette
carbon black, dark brown, earthy brown, rust
Brushwork
Carved and weathered wood, assembled with riveted sheet iron

Curatorial analysis

The horizontal beam makes no attempt to disguise its functional origin: it is an agrarian yoke whose hollows, carved to fit the necks of draft animals, here outline the arms of a cross. In this found-object assemblage, Alexander Chaves fuses sacred iconography with the material evidence of rural toil. The wood, dense, porous, and blackened by the passage of time or by a treatment recalling combustion, preserves the fissures, splinters, and roughness of an organic substance subjected to relentless traction across years of hard labor.

The structure deliberately evades the strict symmetry of a traditional crucifix. The vertical post exhibits a subtle tilt that destabilizes its axis, endowing the piece with an attitude of bodily fatigue, almost human, as though yielding under its own weight. At the junction of both timber blocks, an oxidized iron plate clamps the wood with rustic, square rivets. This utilitarian blacksmith joinery does not merely ensure structural coherence; it introduces a rough, coppery chromatic accent at the exact center of the timber.

Under direct light, the surface reveals an uneven topography where the relief absorbs and scatters illumination. Within the curved hollows where the oxen's necks once rested, shadows turn dense and cavernous, replacing the memory of crucifixion nails with the imprint of yoke straps and harness wear. The absence of a sculpted figure emphasizes that the wood itself embodies suffering; the entire object stands in as the martyr's surrogate.

By exalting a farm implement to the status of a devotional totem, the work establishes an unsparing equivalence between the draft animal's subjugation and spiritual sacrifice. The piece avoids all pious rhetoric to confront the viewer with the physical memory of exhaustion, firmly tethering the notion of Calvary to tilled ground and the countryside's enduring labor.

La Cruz Del Buey

More works by Alexander Chaves

33 works

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