ÜGLY
Close-up of the reclining figure's face: an old man's profile hollowed from the wood burl, metal eye, the abstract body stretching left over an old beam, white background, work by Robert Bibeau

Le vieux

A reclining figure, carved from a dark brown burl and set on an assembly of recovered framing beams. Only the head is freed: a hollowed profile, a heavy brow, a half-open mouth, a metal eye driven into the wood. The body stays an elongated mass that the tormented grain is enough to animate; a gnarled knot makes a cheekbone, a cavity makes an eye socket. The figure rests on the beams as on a bed too hard for sleep: an old man worn through, weathered, pierced and yet enduring, settled to the ground like someone who will not rise again.

Full view of the reclining burl-wood figure on its assembly of old beams, head raised at right, white background
Three-quarter view of the reclining figure, dark burl mass set on the recovered beams, head at right, white background
Earlier state

The same work, photographed at an earlier stage of its making.

Horizontal heavily ridged wood burl, right end rising into a head-like form, white studio background
Video
Reading notes

Medieval effigies laid the dead out on stone; their raw variant, the transi, shows the body as time leaves it. The gesture here is gentler: recycled framing beams for a base, an old man returned to the wood that houses are made of.