About the exhibit
In ‘Christmas Tree 6’, Konstantin Chaykin examines how a symbol, stripped of its familiar context, retains its recognizability even within a different system of coordinates. The Christmas tree as a sign of celebration has undergone similar transformations in culture before: the pagan custom of decorating an evergreen at the winter solstice gradually gave way to a secular attribute of the family holiday, and in each case the form broke away from its original content, filling with new meaning. Assembled from watch components, the tree in this work ceases to be either a natural object or a festive ornament, becoming instead an artifact built according to the logic of the watch movement.
To convey the cyclical, inevitable nature of the holiday, Konstantin Chaykin composes the tree's silhouette out of gears and bridges, elements of the watch movement's recurring structure. The work also demonstrates the principle of the assembly of the image: the picture is built not from the elements of a natural object but from the components of a watch movement. In this way a particular New Year's motif attains the status of an Allegory of a High Order, since the structure of the holiday and the structure of the watch movement are equally grounded in the regular repetition of their elements.
Cycle: Universum "Horological Archetypes"
To convey the cyclical, inevitable nature of the holiday, Konstantin Chaykin composes the tree's silhouette out of gears and bridges, elements of the watch movement's recurring structure. The work also demonstrates the principle of the assembly of the image: the picture is built not from the elements of a natural object but from the components of a watch movement. In this way a particular New Year's motif attains the status of an Allegory of a High Order, since the structure of the holiday and the structure of the watch movement are equally grounded in the regular repetition of their elements.
In Haute Horology, an idea is resolved into engineering. In artwork, it remains a living thought, captured in the moment.
