Znamenje (Sign)

Pohorje, 2009. A sculptural composition installed to mark the official beginning of the Pahernik Foundation's work.

The sculpture Z-namen-je — a play on the Slovenian words for "sign" and "with purpose" — was, like the sculpture Družina (Family), commissioned by the Pahernik Foundation, through the engineer Maks Sušek. Its subject is bound to one of the more important stations along this route: it marks the path to the Pahernik Spruce, a tree whose size and age testify to the beginnings of Pahernik's forestry work.

At the centre of the sculpture are bands cast in bronze — partial impressions of that spruce. They let you perceive the tree's true volume directly, since you can step into an empty space of the same girth as the trunk. The bands are turned from top to bottom, because a work of art, unlike a natural process, follows an entirely different course of growth and development.

Entering this symbolic emptiness, where the sculptural "tree" stands, is further marked by a floor mosaic. You therefore enter the space of nature through culture, and that entrance is accompanied by one more gaze: that of a male and a female stone figure.