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The balance wheel with its blue spokes becomes the enchantress's halo, while its rim and crossed levers symbolize the control of rhythm.
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The ruby jewel that supports the balance staff becomes the enchantress's lips in ‘Oscillia 2.’
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A protruding element with two screws reads as the Enchantress's head: the screw heads become her eyes, reinforcing the anthropomorphism of the Horological Archetype.
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Every microscopic detail is with utmost fidelity — reflecting the hand of an artist and watchmaker who knows the structure of the movement inside and out.
About the exhibit
‘Oscillia 2’ continues the ‘Time-Magic Enchantresses’ Universum and focuses on oscillations—the regular swing of the balance wheel between two extreme positions — which form the basis of a watch movement's precision. Out of this principle the artist creates a Horological Archetype of the enchantress as pendulum, a figure similar to archaic feminine characters long associated with the movement of time and fate, whether the Moirai of antiquity, spinning the thread of life, or folkloric enchantresses whose power is expressed through ritual swaying, turning, incantation. Oscillation thus becomes an allegory of a High Order, where the balance's regular swing reads as an image of the eternal movement between stillness and action inherent to the very nature of time.
The work is built on the principle of mechanical anatomy: the component responsible for oscillation becomes the heroine's body, rather than merely adorning it. The rate regulator acquires, in Chaykin's hands, the status of an independent character within his horological universe. The artist leads the viewer to see, in its measured, impersonal motion, something akin to the very gesture by which a folkloric enchantress governs fate, and the true novelty of the artist's method lies in this identification of a technical assembly as a character. The single supporting element, a large cabochon screw holding the figure in place, becomes a sign of the image's self-sufficiency: behind the figure's seeming lightness stands an exact engineering calculation, without which the enchantress could simply not stand on the canvas.
Cycle: Universum "Horological Archetypes"
The work is built on the principle of mechanical anatomy: the component responsible for oscillation becomes the heroine's body, rather than merely adorning it. The rate regulator acquires, in Chaykin's hands, the status of an independent character within his horological universe. The artist leads the viewer to see, in its measured, impersonal motion, something akin to the very gesture by which a folkloric enchantress governs fate, and the true novelty of the artist's method lies in this identification of a technical assembly as a character. The single supporting element, a large cabochon screw holding the figure in place, becomes a sign of the image's self-sufficiency: behind the figure's seeming lightness stands an exact engineering calculation, without which the enchantress could simply not stand on the canvas.
In Haute Horology, an idea is resolved into engineering. In artwork, it remains a living thought, captured in the moment.
