New gods

2017

Patinated bronze
Varied dimensions between 11 and 2 cm

1st prize at The International Competition of the 20th Miniatures, organised by The Association of Visual Creators of Zaprešić (ULS).

The aurochs (Bos primigenius) has long been a part of human culture, mythology, and use. From cave paintings to Mesopotamian and Norse myths, it carried symbolic weight before being reduced to a resource, and hunted to extinction in 1627.
In the 1930s, Nazi zoologist Lutz Heck attempted to “resurrect” the species through selective breeding, producing the Heck cattle that resembled the aurochs only superficially. Its real role was political fiction.
New gods positions the aurochs not as a specimen but as a mythological companion, placed among the hydra, centaur, and other hybrid figures. What remains are bronze relics, archeological in scale, questioning whether myth is now the only space where the aurochs can endure.

The work is displayed beside a photograph of: Hermann Göring (far right), Lutz Heck (far left), and a Heck bull’s horn at the centre.