‘CARGADOR PEDERNAL’ - OBSIDIAN SCREEN

by SABINO GUISU, Mexico, 2026

SIZE: H: 160 x 200 cm
MATERIAL: forged iron, carved golden sheen Obsidian forged iron, golden sheen Obsidian, directly carved

Sculptural OBSIDIAN screen by Sabino Guisu, an extraordinary, multidisciplinary artist from Oaxaca. The screen carries 20 Obsidian pieces, of the type 'golden sheen' (Obsidiana dorada), a type of Obsidian that in the whole world can only be found in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico. The work is grounded in the repetition of the A glyph found in Mixtec codices, a sign associated with the year bearers, charged with carrying and sustaining time within Mesoamerican ritual order. Transposed into the present, the glyph becomes a sculptural module that no longer measures time but materialises it as weight and tension. The metal framework operates as a system of support, while the obsidian blades activate a symbolic dimension linked to Tezcatlipoca’s Smoking Mirror—a dark, reective surface that does not oer stable images, but instead fractures and confronts. Obsidian introduces the edge as a site of revelation and transformation. Rather than referencing the sacred as iconography, the work reclaims it as experience. Through repetition, cut, and dark reection, time emerges as an unstable force, inviting the viewer to inhabit a threshold between the visible and the invisible.