Scrap Bird III, 2025

ByLuka  

The artist on the work: “Scrap Bird III" is arguably the most frontal and striking of this series. Its body is composed of an assemblage of hard pieces, plates and metallic fragments that overlap like feathers, forming a shell that evokes armor more than light plumage. Yet, it is in this contradiction that its strength lies: a bird that does not need to fly to assert itself, holding itself firmly with the memory of the iron that composes it.

The exaggeratedly elongated beak symbolizes the incessant quest, a gesture of infinite curiosity pointed toward the unknown. The legs, thin but determined, anchor the figure to the wood like roots, while the rest of the body seems ready to leap forward.

In this work, I wanted to reflect the tension between the heavy and the light, the vulnerable and the indestructible. The result is a metallic bird that embodies the paradox of recycling: what was once a tool, a gear, or a piece of waste now becomes a new being, charged with its own life and a presence that cannot be ignored.

The artist on the collection: Byluka's "Scrap Birds" are born from scrap metal, from the constant recycling that takes place in nature. Iron extracted from the earth, melted down, manufactured and then discarded by industry, now transformed into art.

This is my creative process: changing, unpredictable, raw and natural, guided by the sensations that emerge during the very act of creation.

What remains are the hammer marks, the welding scar, vestiges of the origins and the journey of the material towards a new form.

The raw material for my work, scrap metal, comes from very diverse places, each piece carrying an anonymous story, laden with rust and silence.

A gardener's old sickle, hand-forged by a blacksmith, a gear from a Galician sawmill, a nut that crossed the ocean before getting lost and that I found on the beach, an old broken pair of pliers, given as a treasure by a neighbor, a tractor part, rounded by years of caressing the land of Extremadura... Endless stories that flourish in the "Scrap Birds".

Material: scrap metal

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