THECALCINATION
2026
Carved hardwood, integrated light, walnut base
N° 020 / 020
Calcination is the first stage of the alchemical process. The original matter is exposed to extreme heat until everything volatile burns away. What remains is not ash. It is essence — the irreducible core of what the thing always was before it learned to protect itself.
The two forms of this piece rise from a single origin and diverge. Not in conflict. In the way that two truths can emerge from one burning — each real, each necessary, each impossible without the fire that made them.
The wood holds the warmth of what passed through it. That warmth is not a remnant. It is the point.
N°01
N°02Studio note
Alberto Palomino — Montréal, December 2026
The Calcination came from a question I couldn't answer any other way. What does it look like when something burns without fire? When the burning is internal — slow, total, invisible from the outside. The two forms rise from the same base and separate on the way up, and I understood midway through that the separation was the subject. Not division. Departure. The wood carries warmth in a way that surprised me for a piece about destruction — but that is accurate. What calcination actually does is release. It removes everything that was covering something truer. The dark wooden base was the only honest starting point. What burns begins from the ground.