In Build a Ladder from Your Bones, opened at SANDWICH NeuroHope until February 15, Cristian Răduță offers a sharp reflection on one of the recurring obsessions of the present: humanity’s desire to transcend terrestrial limits and conquer outer space without first addressing its own inner deadlocks. Installed within the generous space of Sandwich NeuroHope, the sculptural ensemble functions as a quiet yet resolute warning about the fragility of the symbolic architectures upon which we build our aspirations.
The elongated animals and birds, cast in aluminium, resin, or bronze, take on the status of more-than-human messengers—figures suspended between innocence and latent threat. They appear to be remnants of a failed future, bearing the traces of repeated attempts to dominate the cosmic unknown. The exhibition’s title alludes both to the grand ambitions of space exploration—echoing dystopian projects and billionaires’ escapades beyond the atmosphere—and to the anatomical motif of the bone, recurrent throughout the works and transformed into a structural element of the sculptural body.
The presence of these creatures is paradoxical: they occupy and subtly invade the space, yet remain distant, almost absent, rarely engaging with one another. Each seems to follow its own inertial trajectory, contributing to the construction of an alienated diorama. Formal references draw equally from early sculptural assemblage and from Etruscan frescoes, where domestic and exotic animals assert a quiet, controlled tension. This deliberate choice of forms establishes a zone of distance between the works and the viewer—a symbolic space that should not be crossed.
A key element of Răduță’s practice lies in his working process: the initial modelling in polystyrene allows for rapid, almost instinctive gesture, akin to a three-dimensional sketch. Traces of the process—pores, joints, imperfections—are intentionally preserved in the casting stage, becoming markers of the tension and urgency embedded in the artistic act. In this way, sculpture functions as an equivalent of drawing, exposing the vulnerability and material precariousness of humanity’s grand dreams.
Through these fragile and porous figures, Cristian Răduță unmasks the “noble” rhetoric of escaping our own planetary condition. The greater the ambitions, the more unstable and inadequate the materials that come to support them. Build a Ladder from Your Bones thus becomes a lucid meditation on the impossibility of fleeing ourselves and a call to acknowledge our limits before they collapse under the weight of their own promises.
The exhibition reaffirms Cristian Răduță’s position as one of the relevant voices in contemporary Romanian sculpture, capable of articulating—with subtle humour and controlled irony—the tensions between matter, ideology, and the imaginary of the future.
