Ark, 2018

Basel 2018
Ark

Ciaccia Levi

Installation
Burnished copper pipe, bed springs structure, transparent PVC roll, linoleum flooring tiles
300.0 x 140.0 x 10.0 (cm)
118.1 x 55.1 x 3.9 (inch)
For Art|Basel Statements 2018, artist Alina Chaiderov presents Ark, an installation consisting of a three meters long burnished copper pipe softly embossed into a thick transparent plastic foil wrapping the skeleton of a spring metallic bed frame. Displayed over verdigris linoleum flooring tiles upholstering the booth' surface, the marble patterns and the blueish oxidized copper hues of the linoleum mimic a rocky seabed cartography, a metaphor of the exile journey from her homeland Russia towards Sweden in 1990. With this new installation, Alina Chaiderov continues her research that started with the installation A New Memory Is Made at Castello di Rivoli in 2016, where materials, space, time and memory were the elements composing a “physical constellations of materials”. In Ark, the artist transfigures the everydayness of common objects that find a new balance in the immobility of their simple and mysterious composition, assuming the allure of symbolic, enigmatic and philosophical meanings where the relationship between space and body reverberates on the mirrored surfaces in a play of lights and shadows. The copper pipe striking through the bed frame edges and crushing its structure traces an abstract self-portrait of the artist herself reclining on her bed, trying to rethink a perpetual mental journey floating over a sea of oxidized copper - evoking the corrosion of remembrance. Chaiderov's abilities lie in the psychological and physical approach to materials, reduced to archetypes of themselves, sinking into unconsciousness, awakening atavistic memories.