Space Between
2009
700 x 500 x 500 cm
Parquet floor, Gypsum boards, Pigment, Plaster, Stretcher
Having spent the first fourteen years of my life in Soviet Union and the other fourteen in the United States, I was in a middle ground between the two worlds in Amsterdam. The Netherlands had influenced both of my previous homes, and this insight became a kind of center between the two different sides of my life.
I came to see Amsterdam as a site of contrast: the city created a specific balance between freedom and constraint as well as the human-made and the natural that would repel and attract me in the same time. ‘Space Between’ represented this space that was impossible to define, an environment that was between a palace and a cave but also a kind of chapel. These spaces historically are where art existed and was created for and from.
Completely full but empty in the same time, something kitsch but in the same time beautiful; this is a space where hard-edged geometry produced a chaotic form, an empty space that was made for something to happen and at the same time called for contemplation, a space of the in-between.
The walls were made with a type of fresco technique. The floor was a handmade parquet with a mosaic of 14,000 cross-grain cuts laid out in a pattern of a six pointed star. The timelines of the trees were visible, interweaving with with the geometry of the floor; in the same way the timelines of those walking on top would also cross.
leonid tsvetkov 