About the artwork
The watercolour blueprint presents one of the design variants for the ‘Computus’ wristwatch, a model Konstantin Chaykin has periodically returned to since 2007. The dial is built on the principle of inventive translation: narrow segments bearing ornamental script, recalling Church Slavonic lettering, surround a central field. Here several independent systems meet, the hour scale, the lunar calendar, and the date indicator, each of which once existed only in church practice, and now finds room within a single dial.
The strap and crown are rendered in broad, dark grey watercolour strokes. The golden case, by contrast, is handled differently: a thin, semi-transparent yellow-ochre wash sits over the pencil outline, leaving the drawn line itself visible beneath the paint. The dial is worked more carefully than the rest of the piece: fine pencil lines mark out the scale divisions and hands, while small dabs of blue watercolour, placed point by point, indicate individual elements of the display. This shifting attention between case and dial becomes, in itself, a device of inventive translation.
Universum ‘Horological Graphic Art’
The strap and crown are rendered in broad, dark grey watercolour strokes. The golden case, by contrast, is handled differently: a thin, semi-transparent yellow-ochre wash sits over the pencil outline, leaving the drawn line itself visible beneath the paint. The dial is worked more carefully than the rest of the piece: fine pencil lines mark out the scale divisions and hands, while small dabs of blue watercolour, placed point by point, indicate individual elements of the display. This shifting attention between case and dial becomes, in itself, a device of inventive translation.
Time is not merely a measure. It is a philosophical dimension, an inexhaustible source of inspiration, and the central subject of my art universe.
