Carballo has just added to his collection of urban art a new piece, the “Alén” (the “Great Beyond”)  sculpture by the craftsman Fabián Lage. It is the first sculptural work of this city neighbour that studied in the School Workshop of the City Council and that with this work aims to reflect “the personal improvement of the human being in the face of adversity.” In fact, the story of this piece begins on December 30, 2015, when a gust of wind hit a hundred-year-old cypress tree in the heart of the Municipal Garden. The tree was very deteriorated inside and the strong storms of that winter finished knocking it down. But now the wood of this tree generates itself with a new life within this sculpture.

Lage assumed the task of reusing and recycling the cypress wood not only with the creation of “Alén”, but also with the challenge of providing new street furniture to the Praza do Hospital. The result speaks for itself, in a process that took three years, 1,800 hours of work and 10,000 remains of branch of cypress only in banks, bins and planters. And with a sculpture that goes “beyond what our eyes see” in Lage’s words. In “Alén” the author has used cutting-edge products, both in the treatment of conservation and protection of wood, and in the manufacture of the replicas of the human parts that make up the piece, which are made from actual living models. .

Chromatic variety

The sculptural piece, of great size, offers a varied chromatic spectrum in which light plays a fundamental role, both to enhance the intensity of the colors and to perceive the accumulation of sensations that it intends to transmit, since according to its position and direction it offers a litmus full of brilliant reflections that go from a jet black to a mahogany with golden flashes. Thus, the lack of light turns it into an intense black piece, while with direct light it acquires transparency, revealing golden reflections of the wood.

Fabián Lage

Fabián Lage specialises in restoration and reproductions in wood, especially in antique furniture and carpentry. Although he had already begun to make some incursion in the sculpture with pieces of small size, he himself says that “Alén” is his first work of this type. For Lage “‘Alén’ is life after death, a rebirth that allows us to live and coexist with dignity, a necessary vital attitude that encourages us to seek spaces of rebellion and liberation through which we can escape from so many cages, real and imaginary, that keep us stuck. ”