28 - 31 August . Palais de Carli . Marseille .
an anthology of un-X-act natural woodwork
With works by: Mário Cesariny, Marco Franco, Ellie Ga, Sabine Grimm, João Maria Gusmão, Anne Lefebvre, John Matthews, José Maurício, Musa Paradisiaca & Tomé Coelho, Hans Peter, Bernardino Ribeiro, António Manuel Saraiva, Lucia Sotnikova, Ernesto de Sousa, Jul Susin, Anatoli Susin, Franklin Vilas Boas, Vincent Wolff.
For as long as people have handled sticks, they’ve been staring at them and saying, “That looks like a camel. No, it’s more like a snake. Or a whale. Very much like a whale.” This guessing game relies on pareidolia—a psychological phenomenon that allows us to see figures and faces in things—and is the foundation of a transhistorical sculptural practice that uncovers wild animals and stick figures in branches, logs, and roots. Once the pastime of shepherds and hunters, it comes naturally to enthusiasts of all ages, hobbyists or experienced artisans, and probably to anyone who has experienced boredom in a forest with no Wi-Fi.
The method of this art form requires a careful observation of the raw material, minimal intervention, or none at all. Sometimes you need only a little faith, as a simple twist of the wood makes its shape shift; sometimes, like Michelangelo, you prune it slightly to remove only what doesn’t already belong to the creature inside. What emerges isn’t carved into the wood but coaxed from it – as if the being was always there, hiding like a ghost in plain sight, a natural ready-made waiting in the tension between the matter and the mind.
Guided by the density and resistance of wood fibres, the sharp blade of the involuntary artist releases a menagerie of beings in the same wooden space. From another angle, a coiled viper doubles as a seahorse, a jaguar transforms into a salamander, a rabbit-duck conundrum lurks in every figure, things perhaps unseen even by carver.
These carved branches confess a deep-learnt survival skill that once helped humans scan for threats camouflaged in the background, like the leopard’s spots dissolving in shadow, a python weaved in bamboo trees, or a platypus emerging from...wherever the platypus emerges from. This ancient art practice is after all an exercise in recognition, a training in ambiguous perception to keep us sharp for a hide-and-seek game, Nature’s longest-running play.
The method of this art form requires a careful observation of the raw material, minimal intervention, or none at all. Sometimes you need only a little faith, as a simple twist of the wood makes its shape shift; sometimes, like Michelangelo, you prune it slightly to remove only what doesn’t already belong to the creature inside. What emerges isn’t carved into the wood but coaxed from it – as if the being was always there, hiding like a ghost in plain sight, a natural ready-made waiting in the tension between the matter and the mind.
Guided by the density and resistance of wood fibres, the sharp blade of the involuntary artist releases a menagerie of beings in the same wooden space. From another angle, a coiled viper doubles as a seahorse, a jaguar transforms into a salamander, a rabbit-duck conundrum lurks in every figure, things perhaps unseen even by carver.
These carved branches confess a deep-learnt survival skill that once helped humans scan for threats camouflaged in the background, like the leopard’s spots dissolving in shadow, a python weaved in bamboo trees, or a platypus emerging from...wherever the platypus emerges from. This ancient art practice is after all an exercise in recognition, a training in ambiguous perception to keep us sharp for a hide-and-seek game, Nature’s longest-running play.
An anthology of un-X-act natural wood work gathers prime examples of this art form, objects and photographs alike, serving as sculptural mediums for a matter of the mind. With this collection we hope to revive a human skill that helped our species trick its own mind to overcome the fear of an uncertain natural world, and ready our imagination for the digital wildness ahead.
farO, Marseille, August 2025
farO, Marseille, August 2025
This exhibition would not be possible without the precious help of the artists and lenders . We would like to thank Isabel Alves, John Mathews' family; Museu e Monumentos de Portugal E.P.E /Arquivo de documentação fotográfica; Perve Galeria / Casa da Liberdade Mário Cesariny, CIAJG - Centro Internacional de Arte José de Guimarães / OFICINA.
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