Tui Miklós Szőcs

Munkácsy Award laureate sculptor | 1953, Budapest

Ophelisk – The Road Leading Upward

This work is essentially a gesture, the radical gesture of returning; the upward, luminous path of original virtue as opposed to ancestral sin, or “peccatum originale” – return back to the Sender after a long journey of wandering. It can also be seen as a unique attempt at depicting the potential paths leading to higher states of being, to the castle of the Inner Man. The two intellectual pillars that inspired the forming of this piece are both imbued with solar impulse: the semantic range of the light serpent (ophis) of the gnostic sects positively ferment the ancient system of symbols related to the Egyptian obelisk, in a linguistic sense too. I intend this work as a reminder, and even a call: even amidst the struggles of everyday life we must sometimes hear the faint call meant to lead us to a higher purpose.