Umarmung IV

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.

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.

Daniel Bucur always manages to amaze the viewer. He directs the eye to the solid triangle, which continues in deep incisions. And suddenly you realize that wood cannot simply be bent! There must have been magical forces at work here.

Daniel Bukur's magic lies in making things, even made of a hard, non-bendable material like oak, look soft and fragile. The artist bridged this squaring of the circle with a model made of leather, whose shape he later transferred one-to-one to the hard oak wood. The perfect curves against the grain, the resulting suppleness testifies to perfection and is due to careful and patient handwork. The emergence of the look-through also brings to mind real life. Often you think you have completely grasped a situation in a fraction of a second, but only on closer inspection you realize its complexity and also beauty.