Sergey Shaulis’s bronze cast sculptures make us want to curl up in the fetal position.
Though varied in their form and expression, Ukrainian artist Sergey Shaulis’s melancholic sculptures share a similar abstract, hollow center. This eight-piece series, The man without a rod, almost ten years in the making, is an introspective representation of what the artist calls absolute hopelessness. “It's about the emptiness of the soul,” Shaulis tells , “but it's also about starting anew; when you feel nothing but find the power inside of you to stand up and move.”
When he started the series in 2007, the first piece was originally made with soft materials, but Shaulis decided to cast it in bronze. The artist uses a combination of clay, brass, and bronze casting and puts each piece together in segments, looping and counter form.
Shaulis says his materials can cost a pretty penny. In an interview with Unexplored City, the artist describes it as an expensive procedure. In addition to the materials required to create the base of the sculpture, there is the need for dryers and casting furnaces, as well as molding and welding materials.
Shaulis went to school for three years to study engineering physics but left without completing his degree. He went on to study Fine Arts with a focus on “easel and monumental sculpture.” Since then, Shaulis’s work has been shown in galleries around the Ukraine and Russia.
All images courtesy the artist
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