Art

Wind and weather erode the stone. Only the gentleness of the constant water is able to shape the rock. The unyielding gentleness manages to put its stamp on this hard substance, but this takes many millennia, perhaps even millions of years.

Wood, on the other hand, is a fragile material; it can be cut and split, it can burn or break. Even the hardest piece of oak can rot and weather in a few decades. It demands caution in its treatment and use. It must be cared for. Wood, unlike stone, is not a material of eternal duration. Here, however, Daniel Bucur has created a massive, indestructible block through its exterior design. A chunk of rock that was thrown up from a volcano, solidified and preserved for eternity. As a whole, it remains. Indestructible for centuries to come.

Even at first glance we see cracks in the wood and the irregularities in the grain. The cracks seem to change with time, they seem to grow, and narrow again. They throw a wrench into the repetition. Man is here trying to impose repetition on the natural material.A thing of the impossible? We ask ourselves, how did the artist work? Did he repeat his thoughts? Or did he deliberately design the repetition to direct our gaze to the antithesis of repetition? The uniqueness of the material is unmistakable. And yet another question suggests itself: Was the basic material chosen before the idea?
Was a piece of wood deliberately chosen here to counter the repetition? And the viewer realizes that an initially simple sculpture can raise more questions than a complex structure. The object consists of several geometrically identical basic elements and therefore appears simple and repetitive. But nature does not always allow for simplicity and repetition, it is not always made for it.

A wonderful detail of this sculpture is the surface. It is completely rounded, without corners and edges. After sanding it was stained in Bordeaux red and Daniel Bucur carved small holes in the sculpture. The result is an exotic beauty called "peephole".

But what does the sculpture really represent? The shape reminds us of an amoeba. It is based on the fascinating property of completely changing the shape of the body. Thanks to its outstanding abilities, it moves and feeds by "flowing around" other tiny creatures, enclosing them completely and then digesting them. At the upper end of the amoeba-like sculpture a small fork has formed in the movement. Briefly, one can catch a glimpse through here, before the peephole closes again with its own movement. And it does not matter whether this figure is more like a peephole or an amoeba. The imagination helps us to find an association here, but the artist had other things in mind. And this is also the purpose of a work of art - to direct the thoughts and at the same time to release them. The viewer thus moves away from the artist's thought to find his own approach back to the object depicted. Astonishment arises from the unpredictable. Let yourself be surprised!

This sculpture was made by Daniel Bucur from mulberry wood. A tree that grew in the new Austrian home of the artist and was felled. The wood is characterized by its particular hardness and can therefore be polished well.

The original shape may once have been a branch fork, the two branches form a binary shape. They represent two people grown together, a couple. The surface appears organic, rounded, after treatment with shellac it was elaborately polished and provided with countless holes. Because depending on the angle from which you look at the sculpture and depending on the nature of the light falling on it - hard, soft, sunlight or artificial light - the couple glows, shines and seems to glow from within. Just like us humans, who show different facets from different angles. The sculpture is also a haptic experience. With closed eyes, one feels the smooth warm surface, the holes penetrate the "skin", they show us the inside. And as with us humans, the outside is not always the same as the inside.

This wonderful sculpture, carefully crafted from walnut, Daniel Bucur has given the name "Embrace IV". In the beginning there was a solid piece of wood, which the artist visually divided along a fine, curved line. The beautifully rounded cut edges create the illusion as if the sculpture consisted of two parts. Sometimes it takes the supposed separation to make closeness and connection shine in new splendor. The surface is carefully polished and embedded with shellac. This allows the grain and natural dark brown coloring of the walnut wood and the exciting surfaces to be fully appreciated.

Because of the way it is made, the figure looks like it was cast from one piece. Be embraced, you two pieces! - Here the artist has created a very intimate work and captured a moment of deepest human emotion.

An eye that looks attentively into the distance. It perceives all movements, it is concentrated, it observes the entire environment. It turns in all directions and looks down on Stephansplatz.

The challenge for the artist lay in directing the natural structure of the wood into new directions in such a way that the object awakens to new life like a sensory organ. The sculpture projects vertically upward and was made from a solid piece of squared ash wood. The body is rough but regularly carved. From it protrudes a piece that is bent from the vertical to the horizontal axis. This changes the dynamics, the shape now goes into the width and distance. This impression is supported by a completely contrasting surface texture. The rounded part is now carefully polished and treated with shellac. This gives it not only the shape, but also the moist, shiny surface of an eye. One would touch the body, but not such a fragile and intimate sense organ as the eye. The eye is in tension, it does not observe inertly. The eye is alert and filled with curiosity.