STONE / texas spiral

Jesús Bautista Moroles is a sculptor of one of the hardest stones known to humans: granite. His treatment of granite is tantamount to straight-edge abstract painting: his cuts have a geometric precision that defies the material. Moroles has built sculptural monuments and sanctuaries in many countries in the world where there has been a strong culture of stone: Egypt, China, Japan, etc. Compared to his monumental works, the one included in this exhibit is modest is size, but truly poetic. "Spiral" is a jewel, a gong, an eye, an aura, and the perfect infinite shape of the Greeks. It is a sculpture unlike most stone sculptures that sit heavily on the ground because it defies the natural gravity of stone. "Spiral" hangs suspended in the air as would a flower or a spider. Although the pink granite of which it is made originates in Texas, the circular form Moroles unveils from it is an ancient Chinese symbol of heaven. Playing with and against gravity Moroles re-establishes a sacred connection between form and matter&endash;heaven (air) and earth (stone). However, there is also surface texture in the work: the spiraling lines carved on one of its surfaces resemble a water whirlpool or air twisting in a tornado. The other side of the disk is perfectly polished as if it were the first ripple of a bird, a drop or a rock falling into the water. The central hole is the eye of the storm, the chalice of a flower, the emptiness in the core of our being, the nothingness that is something. A spiral is an infinitely diminishing circular path that seeks a central point that it never reaches.