Putrefaction 2

Beschreibung

This sculpture is not just a warthog: it is a lump of flesh that has stopped asking permission to exist. The head is captured in a moment that is no longer life but not yet silence. The mouth is wide open like a well—not to scream, but because there is no one left to close it. The tusks, once weapons of defense, now seem useless relics, tired ivory protruding from a dark, swollen, irregular mass. The skin no longer protects: it has shrunk, cracked, as if the body were trying to free itself. There are those who look at this warthog and feel immediate disgust. Orderly souls, accustomed to thinking that death should be composed, clean, perhaps tamed by a gilded frame or a withered flower. For them, this open mouth is a mistake, an insult: putrefaction should not be shown, it should remain behind a closed door. Then there are those who feel fear. Not for the beast, but for what it tells. Because in that yielding flesh, in those teeth that emerge like shards from a landslide, they recognize a truth that allows no concessions: we too, one day, will cease to be form and become matter that surrenders. The warthog is not dead: it has been dying for too long. Others still, a few, do not look away. They approach slowly, almost respectfully. They see the detail, the cracks, the red that is no longer blood but the memory of blood. For them, this sculpture is a map. An atlas of the end. They are not seeking beauty: they are seeking sincerity. And finally, there are those who smile, but it is a crooked smile. Hollowed-out souls, who have already seen pieces of their lives rot. For them, this gaping mouth does not kill: it confesses. It says that the end does not come with a sudden blow, but with a slow detachment from the world, an unraveling that no one photographs because it is too real. This warthog does not attack. It does not sleep like the crocodile with its mouth open, ready to pounce. Here the mouth is a sign of abandonment, a surrender. It no longer bites anyone, but continues to hurt the viewer, because it leaves no room for illusion. It is a head that speaks not of the death of the animal, but of the death of the idea that everything can be ordered, cleaned, archived. It is the face of decay that is unhurried, that remains, that takes up space—like the memories we would like to erase but instead live within us.