Valentin Atrosh
sculptor / object artist

I work with wood that is usually avoided: pieces with cracks, voids, traces of rot, and disrupted structure. I do not repair or conceal these conditions — I accept them as the starting form and the point of departure for a dialogue.

My practice is built on the interaction between human intervention and the material’s inherent internal tensions. Through carving, pressure, and the vibration of tools, the wood reveals its structure and begins to guide the process. Sometimes it resists, sometimes it opens unexpectedly — and it is within this dialogue that the object is born.

Fire in my work is not a method of final finishing. Fire is an ally. Through controlled charring, I alter the wood’s physical behaviour — prompting it to crack, warp, and open up. This process exposes everything hidden for decades: it reveals annual rings, fractures, concealed damage, insect galleries, and turns them into the defining elements of the form.

The resulting objects are neither “charred vases” nor conventional “wood sculptures.” They are collaborative outcomes, where the final appearance belongs neither solely to me nor to the original material. Forms that emerge not in spite of imperfections, but because of them.

For me, wood is a carrier of time, a symbol of inner resilience. Its strength lies in its wildness and primordial nature, which fully emerges when the material is allowed to be itself. In its patterns one can read illnesses, wounds, and recoveries. It holds the memory of pain and an extraordinary capacity for continuation — the readiness to display its scars and yet stand upright.

I work without templates or theories — only in direct dialogue with the living material, trusting its cues and my own sensations. My objects exist on the boundary between sculpture and process. They are not finished forms, but captured states of transformation — a record of survival and acceptance.