Architecton of Lysa Hora (Architecton of Bald Mountain )

2021

plaster, wood, metal, paint

in collaboration with Dana Kosmina

This monumental work draws on a series of “architectons”, drawings and later plaster block models by Kazimir Malevich exploring the notion of cosmos and “cosmic cities”. They embodied Malevich’s efforts to translate the suprematist principles of composition to three-dimensional forms and architecture. This work, made in a time and place where artists and especially architects internationally (far beyond the Soviet Union) were drawn to the belief that the socialist revolution offered the prospect of imminently realizing their most utopian dreams.10 This belief in an imminent utopia, inherently embedded in the architectons, is juxtaposed to “a burned house” installed instead of the original black circle of Malevich’s Architecton. In doing so, Kadan replaces the notion of cosmos and utopia with that of a violent reality. The burned house makes reference to the attack in 2018 on a Roma encampment in Kyiv by a paramilitary organization C14 (extreme right nationalists). They rounded up the families and led them away from their homes, which were subsequently burned. The burned house is equally a stain on the utopian dreams voiced by socialism, while the sculpture expresses an ideological clash that echoes the binary world views dividing today’s society at large, both in Ukraine and on the global stage.