Alexander Chaves
MoloteInquire about availability
- Year
- 2015
- Technique
- Metal and Faber-Castell Pencil
- Dimensions
- 30 × 10 × 10 cm
- Status
- Inquire about availability
- Palette
- mustard yellow, graphite, steel gray, old rose, light wood
- Brushwork
- Suspended assemblage of graphite pencils grouped and fastened by a metal chain.
Curatorial analysis
Curatorial analysis
A dense cluster of yellow pencils hangs in the void, suspended solely by a slender metal chain that drops in a rigorous vertical line. Their sharpened ends point toward the ground, fanning out into a bristling cone that instantly transforms a docile school tool into a suspended, tense, and threatening artifact. The title appeals with precision to Costa Rican vernacular speech, invoking the molote as a chaotic agglomeration, a street tumult, or an entanglement where individualities dissolve into a tightly packed, confused mass.
The structure operates through an evident contrast between containment and dispersion. At the upper apex, the ferrules and worn pink erasers are forced into a suffocating coexistence, tightly bound and subordinated to the tensile pull of the metal. Toward the bottom, however, the hexagonal shafts of yellow wood yield to divergence and weight, unfurling a piercing fan of graphite. This conical silhouette evokes both the plumb-line verticality of a surveying instrument and the suspended head of a medieval flail, endowing the cluster with an unsettling gravitational energy: everything within it seems poised to drop or pierce.
A biting irony emerges from the mass repetition of the graphite pencil. As the elemental medium of drawing, intimate notation, and the construction of ideas, it is here rendered useless for mark-making by its own accumulation. The instrument of thought becomes a rigid, heavy, and potentially damaging collective body. The bright yellow lacquered wood, the barcode stamped on each shaft, and the cold sheen of the steel converse in an industrial cleanliness that clashes with the latent hostility of so many exposed tips.
By suspending this bundle in empty space, Alexander Chaves freezes a moment of rigorous physical tension. Pendular and silent, the object gauges the air with the severity of a trap about to spring, sustaining a dramatic charge where the fragility of wood contends with the inexorable pull of gravity.
More works by Alexander Chaves
33 works
Available works
Inquire about availability
- Educación EspecialInquire about availabilityAlexander Chaves · 2014
- Escuela 3Inquire about availabilityAlexander Chaves · 2015
- Entre más aprendoInquire about availabilityAlexander Chaves · 2013
- BullyngInquire about availabilityAlexander Chaves · 2014
- BultoInquire about availabilityAlexander Chaves · 2015
- Escuela 2Inquire about availabilityAlexander Chaves · 2015
- Verdad o castigoInquire about availabilityAlexander Chaves · 2014
- ColumpioInquire about availabilityAlexander Chaves · 2015
- ProfesorInquire about availabilityAlexander Chaves · 2015
- SilencioInquire about availabilityAlexander Chaves · 2014
- GrafitosInquire about availabilityAlexander Chaves · 2015
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