Blue Cities

2015

Installation

This installation emerged by chance.

One day I saw blue rubber syringes in the drugstore, their domes shone magically in the light of fluorescent lamps. I bought 12 or 16 of them – everything they had at the moment.

Strange as it may seem, these artifacts reminded me of a sad scene of the flooded church in the city of Kalyazin. Nothing but the bell tower and domes of the church were above the water. Young people had fun around them, frolicking on motorboats and yachts.

As a matter of fact, those syringes stayed in a box in my apartment until I was invited to participate in a water show. I bought more syringes, set these domes on glass jars of water. Rubber syringes resemble both the domes, and the sky. Large and high glass jars stay in the center, small and low bottles are at the edges. So, the installation looks like a city and a cloud.

I like the blue domes. I happened to get 3 cities. There is no critical pathos in this work. When I was working on this installation, I imagined a wonderful city of Ledenetz in the Russian North Nicholas Roerich wrote about, or the magic underwater city of Kitezh rising on the bottom of the lake in the Novgorod region according to the legend, or, perhaps, these were fantastic blue cities of romantic songs and dreams.

THE BLUE CITIES

Installation, 170×300×300 cm

Glass, rubber, water, wooden podiums

2011