The sculpture is called "Column". It is woven from hazel - Nikolai Polissky's artel weaved it in the workshop of Nikola-Lenivets for four months. The sculpture was ordered by INTECO, the developer of the West Garden residential complex, which is being built according to the project of the SPICH bureau on the banks of the Ramenka River, next to the famous residential complex of the nineties "Golden Keys". It is planned to set up a park of the same name at the West Garden residential complex - developers define its genre as park city living and report that the park will occupy 30% of the project area, that is, the territory of the complex. The park improvement project was developed by ARTEZA. The sculpture of Polissky should become one of the art objects of the future park.
The sculpture is a cylinder woven from light branches devoid of bark. The object is reported to weigh nearly 6 tons. Its height is slightly less than the sales office building. At the base and fuste, the "column" adheres to the shape of a cylinder, and the branches form a kind of spiral flutes - this type of column, with spiral flutes, is known in the history of art as Middle Eastern or Jewish. In the upper part, the “column” expands with a kind of “capital”, and here it already looks like a basket, since the ends of the branches break off unevenly. All together, especially from a distance and thanks to the light shade of hazel branches, even more than a column, looks like a sheaf - but very large and swirling.
Such a sheaf can be imagined in front of the entrance to the agricultural pavilion at the old VDNKh - as a metaphor for fertility. Well, in this case, it can be understood as an image of the prosperity of the construction industry in the capital.
The name "Column" was suggested by the curator of INTECO special projects Irina Korshunova. In addition to the association with a column, the name echoes another reading of the same word - colona is the name of a plant species related to lindens. Let's add from ourselves that, for example, colona auriculata and colona erecta are known, ropes are made from the bark of the first, and textiles from the second. Which again, albeit in a roundabout way, leads us to the imagery of the national economy. Meanwhile, it is known that Polissky's objects are not only great and laconic, but also ambiguous; you can understand them as you like.
The post on the installation of the sculpture also states that the final object is the result of a long search for form, and that it was originally planned to make a smaller column, and it is inside, in the room. But in the process of work the object "grew" and found a place for itself in the open air.
The organizers also emphasize that Colonna is Nikolai Polissky's second work in Moscow. The first was "Likhoborskie Vorota" - a tetrapilon at the entrance to the Otrada park on the Atufevskoe highway. Note, however, that in fact "Column" is Polissky's third object in the capital, since the second was an installation in the Chermyanka park, however, it was temporary and dismantled.
All works by Nikolai Polissky can be found here.
