A walk in Frieze London’s English garden

 

Artist Stoyan Dechev’s Event Horizon (2019) is on display in London at Regent’s Park until the 31st of October 2021. The thunderbolt installation got a foothold in the English turf as part of the Frieze London art-fair. Artist Stoyan Dechev is represented at Frieze London by Anca Poterașu Gallery, with the participation of Romanian Cultural Institute in London. The art gallery will keep its stand from the 13th to the 17th of October this year.

 

Let’s walk among the monumental art pieces curated by Lavinia Diniz Freitas. The Event Horizon installation seems to match London’s typical weather. Nevertheless, a walk in the English garden on one of the rare sunny days is tempting to everyone. Event Horizon ornates the lawn along with Rose Wylie’s Pineapple (2020) and Annei Morris’ Stack 9. Ultramarine Blue (2021). Playground Sculpture, one of artist Isamu Noguchi’s multiple prototypes, also appears in Regent’s Park. The sculpture was produced in 2021 after the patent registered by the artist between 1965 and 1980. It counts among his numerous installations, which became art, despite the fact that their primary role was the one of playground structures for children.

Art fair Frieze London offers an annual sculpture exhibition in Regent’s Park. A sort of perpetuation of “follies” (Les fabriques de Jardin), sculptural ornamental elements used between XVIII and XIX centuries for the gardens of the West-European nobility’s domains. The summerhouses, pagodas or caves used to mark the observations point upon the landscape during one’s walk. The Woodstock Mansion’s ruins in Blenheim castle’s park, England, represent the first historical “folly”. Nevertheless, we are far from the ruins’ romantic fantasy when crossing Regent’s Park.

 

 

 

 

Event Horizon installation appears freed from any gallery’s walls. In outside space, it seems to create a dialog with the environment and the meteorological phenomena. Few cultures associate the thunder symbol with Zeus, Jupiter, Thor or St, Ellijah. For Stoyan Dechev, the cloud is a time and space symbol, at the intersection between astronomy and astrology. The installation is part of a series, which exploits this symbol’s metaphorical qualities and inherent ambiguities, as it was used from Antiquity. In the artist’s perspective, the sculpture ensues from a parallel between science and systems of belief. It questions the limits of knowledge at the threshold of myths.

The Event Horizon series was exhibited at Spinnerie Galleries in Leipzig, in 2019. An exhibition organized by Anca Poterașu Gallery, which has lately been encouraging contextualisation and experimental practice in its recent curatorial programs. The gallery has participated in national and international art-fairs since 2012. With this information in mind, one can ask whether these art-fairs with commercial purposes can actively contribute to cultural creation, more precisely by sustaining culture. One cannot be certain, when facing the strange situation that contemporary art is facing today. A situation which tends to mistake a cultural actor’s part for the one of a big-scale art sales manager. It is our choice, as observers, to look or not look, in one direction or the other.

 

 

Article links:
http://www.icr-london.co.uk/article/stoyan-dechev-s-event-horizon-represented-by-anca-poterasu-gallery-at-frieze-london-2021.html

https://www.frieze.com/page/about-frieze-london

https://ancapoterasu.com/art-fairs/

https://arac.ro/exhibitions/stoyan-dechev-event-horizon/

https://week2019.arttoday.org/en/stoyan-dechev

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/frieze-sculpture-2021-2009485