Alfio Bonanno: Between beech and oak

(colloquially called the Horn of Plenty)

Perhaps TICKON's most iconic and most photographed work is Alfio Bonanno's Between Blood Beech and Oak, which, like a giant cornucopia created from burnt larch trunks attached to steel rings, pours out large boulders from its interior.

After the fierce hurricane in 1999, Alfio Bonanno, who is the regular initiator of TICKON, chose to contribute to the sculpture park himself.

The hurricane meant that several works suffered death - not in decay and the slow and beautiful death that is part of the cycle of Land Art and site-specific natural art... but rather in the abrupt beheading caused by the ravages of the wind.

When Alfio Bonanno works with site-specific art, the first – and perhaps most important – task is to find the right location. Often he believes that it actually happens the other way around: That it is the place that finds him. So also this clearing just before the forest becomes denser and the forest floor more swampy.

Because not all places need the symbiosis between art and nature. According to Alfio Bonanno, some areas must remain undisturbed and secretive, and it is precisely the interaction between nature's own expression and the man-made that is TICKON's greatest strength.

But the place where Mellem Blodbøg and Oak is located is a natural space for a topographical as well as a botanical experiment, and with its size the giant "peddler's house" therefore helps to stimulate curiosity and activate the concept of relativity. 

Like many of the other sculptures in TICKON, this work also contains references to Denmark's ancient times.

Artist: Alfio Bonanno
Year: 2001

SEE MORE OF THE WORKS HERE