Katya EV
PLAY MODULES
text published in the catalogue of the exhibition "Beauty of Disgraceful", Moscow, Apr 2014, curator Andreï Erofeev
Yellow and green barriers have drawn a spatial dotted drawing in bright colours through the greyness of the urban landscape. Specific architectural components in Moscow, they mark the territory of the residential districts for a few years. These installed structures by the Muscovite municipalities’ decision are rather like odds and ends than an urbanism project.
Made in a traditional way with metal tubes and bars largely cut, line pipes, reinforcing iron, approximately welded and painted, these structures are modern manifests among others, of our careless attitude for our territory.
Decorative constructions consist at the beginning of a geometrical ornament, they become windy, curved, they melt. Their texture evolves as a bark, the coats of paint are crumbling, become life forms, by the confrontation between their unsuitable materials to their function and their manual maintenance.
To make models of Muscovite barriers (each model gets an existing prototype) is a free play. Emancipate the gaze on these urban components, with which the Muscovites share a close experience of indignation, looking for an aesthetic potential of these rough shapes.
Design the models already distorted, anticipating their degradation, validating them in a project state, raising them to the rank of harmonious forms. By extracting from them the repressive function (sectioning of the territory, prevent the yield), by converting them into toys, in manipulable objects, this act aims to contribute to the transformation of the relation to the territory.