At the booth, visitors will be able to see the new artworks: 'Dormouse Dance', 'Obsessed With Time 2' and 'In Search of Time'. Also on show: an exclusive only at the exhibitions limited edition 12-colour silkscreen 'Wolf', the limited edition catalogue 'Konstantin Chaykin: Horological Archetypes' and the book 'Konstantin Chaykin: Haute Horlogerie with a Russian Soul'.
Hence the title. A codex is at once a manuscript, a body of laws and a writing system. Konstantin Chaykin’s Codex has its own alphabet of circles and axes, a syntax of divisions and symmetries, and a vocabulary that keeps expanding.
The exhibition is devoted to how artworks are created. In Horological Art — the genre created by Konstantin Chaykin — the elementary operation is the point of departure, and it becomes the organising idea of the booth: dividing a circle, drawing an axis, joining arcs. Together these operations make up the language in which the multidisciplinary artist paints. A watch movement detail in Konstantin Chaykin's works functions as a morpheme within this language: it holds the figure together in the same way a brushstroke does for the Post-Impressionists, or a plane of colour does for the Modernists. In this way, the element becomes part of the syntax itself, rather than a depicted object. The distinction is fundamental: an ordinary detail in a work can usually be replaced by another without disrupting the work's concept, whereas replacing an element of this grammar breaks the entire system.
At the CODEX exhibition, visitors will see how the same grammar gives rise to the most varied statements, from a portrait to a Bestiary, from a single figure to an entire Universe of Horological Archetypes.
Address: Camikebir Mahallesi, Taşkızak Tersanesi Cd. No:5, 34440 Beyoğlu, Istanbul.
