detail, 'Dog with a bone'
detail, 'Dog with a bone'
detail, 'Dog with a bone'
'Dog with a bone' (2024)
Dog with a bone
Wood sculpture
Variable dimensions
2024
"Dog with a Bone is a carved wooden sculpture featuring a bone-shaped boat, a Hadley’s quadrant sail, and an amalgamation of coastlines from four significant maritime conflict zones. A greyhound, caught in the moment of the hunt, serves as the ship’s figurehead - guiding the vessel into a charged, battle-worn narrative.
Through jagged carvings, harsh surface treatments, and the symbolic use of the greyhound - a dog bred to pursue - the work conjures a macabre atmosphere, one of relentless pursuit and obsessive drive. The exaggerated scale difference between the dog and the bone evokes the idiom “biting off more than you can chew,” amplifying the tension between desire and capacity.
The coastlines - from the Heligoland Bight, Pearl Harbor, the Gulf of Tonkin, to the Leyte Gulf - are sequenced chronologically, forming a flowing timeline of war and intervention. Each serves as a geographic scar, marking moments of profound military aggression.
Inspired by Gerhard Marx’s manipulation of map lines to reimagine spatial narratives, this work reflects on a nation’s compulsive behavior in wartime: the obsessive strategizing, the persistent entanglement. Most notably, it critiques America’s continued pattern of inserting itself into conflicts far from its own borders - often uninvited, often unrelenting. In this, the greyhound becomes a metaphor for that fanatical persistence - unwilling to let go of the bone."
