About the exhibit
The motif of the wheel of fortune belongs among the enduring images of medieval philosophy: the goddess Fortune turns her wheel, raising some and casting down others, leaving to the human being only the acceptance of this movement's inevitability. A watch movement represents a kindred structure: a system of interdependent rotating wheels obeying a single set order, from which not a single component can be removed without stopping the entire movement. It is precisely this structural kinship, the gear wheel as a distant descendant of the ancient and medieval wheel of fortune, that gave rise to the artwork.
The canvas shows an autonomous watch module: a brass mainplate, steel screws and a pyramidal base locked into a rigid construction, stripped of decorative excess. As in other works by Konstantin Chaykin, this technical assembly acquires character and mood, continuing his series of anthropomorphic modules. The exposed gear with a ruby center serves as Wristmon's signature "eye", drawing the viewer's gaze toward the flow of time, while the spear like lever, frozen at the composition's upper edge, reads as a second hand suspended in the instant before it moves. The title "The Hour Will Come" reads as an allegory of a High Order, a metaphor for the implacable turning of the wheel of fate: when the lever descends, the mechanical warden will remind us that his moment is drawing near.
Cycle: Universum "Horological Archetypes"
The canvas shows an autonomous watch module: a brass mainplate, steel screws and a pyramidal base locked into a rigid construction, stripped of decorative excess. As in other works by Konstantin Chaykin, this technical assembly acquires character and mood, continuing his series of anthropomorphic modules. The exposed gear with a ruby center serves as Wristmon's signature "eye", drawing the viewer's gaze toward the flow of time, while the spear like lever, frozen at the composition's upper edge, reads as a second hand suspended in the instant before it moves. The title "The Hour Will Come" reads as an allegory of a High Order, a metaphor for the implacable turning of the wheel of fate: when the lever descends, the mechanical warden will remind us that his moment is drawing near.
In Haute Horology, an idea is resolved into engineering. In artwork, it remains a living thought, captured in the moment.
