Dushanbe Series A Part 1
Walls and Trees
City of Dushanbe was designed in the early 20th century by architects and urbanists from St.Petersburg (then Leningrad). The city is laid out according to the regulations dating back to Empress Catherine II of the Russian Empire. These regulations among other things imply avenues and vistas, an overall orthogonality of the plan, and tree-flanked streets with free-standing buildings rarely forming a continuous façade. At the same time, most of the city’s present population is accustomed to and practices non-modernist ways of living and thinking. Hence, within the framework of arrow-straight avenues, a rhizomatic body of introverted courtyard houses and winding walled passages, common to Bukhara and Samarqand, looms. This complexity truly defines the space of Dushanbe.
Key concepts that might be of assistance:
BRICK, blocks of tempered mud, either sun-dried (ḵešt) or baked in a kiln (ājor), the traditional building material in most of Iran. It has customarily been made from a mixture of water-soaked earth (gel-čāl), straw, and chaff (kāh) and formed in wooden molds, which in the 20th century are standardized at about 20 x 20 x 4.5 cm (Wulff, Crafts, pp. 109-10).
CHINAR, the “Oriental plane (tree),” Platanus orientalis L. (fam. Platanaceae). This species of plane is indigenous from southeastern Europe to the Iranian plateau. Despite all those virtues and uses, the plane has been disparaged by some less romantic Persian poets as “fruitless,” “empty-handed,” and, therefore, useless (cf. the same poetic disgrace on the bīd “willow,” cypress, etc., see also Dehḵodā, loc. cit.).
BOXTREE, Buxus L. spp., šemšād, common name for numerous species of evergreen shrubs or trees of the family Buxaceae.
Dushanbe Series A Part 2
Charcoal Exercises
The climate in Dushanbe is Mediterranean; however, it is significantly influenced by the humid continental climate of Siberia. This results in winters with temperatures regularly descending beyond the freeze/thaw threshold. Centralised residential heating in Dushanbe is usually provided from November to early April, while residents of courtyard houses naturally use their heating boilers whenever needed. Due to the higher price of electricity and the lack of a natural gas extraction industry, coal is the most common fuel for heating purposes in both the municipally run centralised system and in houses with independent heating systems. The coal is mined in the mountains roughly 30 miles north of Dushanbe.
Because Dushanbe is nestled in a valley between two mountain ranges, the air often remains stagnant. While this creates beautiful effects of amplified aerial perspective, it has its drawbacks. One of them is the persistent smell of burned coal that lingers in the air for most of the year, particularly at higher altitudes. Another issue is the humidity, which provides a fertile setting for fungi, specifically black mould.
Key concepts that might be of assistance:
BOILER, apparatus designed to convert a liquid to vapour. In a conventional steam power plant, a boiler consists of a furnace in which fuel is burned, surfaces to transmit heat from the combustion products to the water, and a space where steam can form and collect.
AERIAL PERSPECTIVE, method of creating the illusion of depth, or recession, in a painting or drawing by modulating colour to simulate changes effected by the atmosphere on the colours of things seen at a distance.
Dushanbe Series A Part 3
Charcoal Developments
On the northern side, Dushanbe suburbs extend to the foothills of the Hissar mountain range. Some of them, quite expectedly yet not commonly perceived as such, offer great and unexpected views over the city. On the southern side, beyond the Kofarnihon river, low hill formations constitute the main part of a geological milieu also known as the Tajik Depression.
Dushanbe was conceived and implemented during the Soviet era as the capital of the Tajik Republic; thus, many toponyms belong to the Soviet toponymic tradition. One of them is ‘Spartacus,’ referring to an area around the stadium of the same name. In the USSR, this name was chosen for numerous sports-related entities (such as unions, teams, and their respective training facilities) after, as it is believed, the eponymous 1874 book by Raffaello Giovagnoli, a prominent activist and a member of Garibaldi’s volunteer corps.
Siena, in Tuscany, is known, among many other things, for its Palazzo Publico and Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s frescoes commonly referred to as the 'Allegory of Good Government and its Effects on Town and Country' and 'Allegory of Bad Government and its Effects on Town and Country.' The last painting project to be carried out in Palazzo Publico to date was the decoration of the Sala del Risorgimento in 1886.
Dushanbe Series B Part 1
Approaches
During the weeks when I worked on these drawings, I spent the majority of my workdays on the service level of a building, developing a project of a house with a garden. The service floor was devoid of windows, except for the evacuation stairways. The other floors contained a hotel (above and below) and a hospital (seven floors below the hotel). Henceforth, the service floor can effectively be considered as bearing the number 8½. The building was designed to house offices and had previously served as a temporary shelter for civil war refugees.
The room allocated to me was equipped with a kitchenette and a landline telephone. Other rooms were occupied by housekeepers and technicians, drinking water reservoirs, ventilation and air-conditioning machinery, and autoclaves.
Key concepts that might be of assistance:
SALOME (flourished 1st century CE) according to the Jewish historian Josephus, the daughter of Herodias and stepdaughter of Herod Antipas, tetrarch (ruler appointed by Rome) of Galilee, a region in Palestine.
MACGUFFIN, element in a work of fiction that drives the plot and motivates the characters despite being relatively insignificant to the story.
LIMBO, in Roman Catholic theology, the border place between heaven and hell where dwell those souls who, though not condemned to punishment, are deprived of the joy of eternal existence with God in heaven.
Dushanbe Series B Part 2
Ganesha Blvd Revisited
The off-hours throughout the Dushanbe Series B period, I spent at a friend's house adjacent to the northeastern foothills. The courtyard house featured a splendid garden adorned with various fruit trees, shrub roses, and a pergola entwined with grapevines, crafted from a round-section steel tube. The basement of the study/library building, located in the southwestern corner of the property, housed an ample yet steadily diminishing supply of wine.
Key concept that might be of assistance:
CHARBAGH, lit. “four gardens,” a rectangular garden divided by paths or waterways into four symmetrical sections.
Some other potentially helpful terms:
LAMBERT CONFORMAL PROJECTION, conic projection for making maps and charts in which a cone is, in effect, placed over the Earth with its apex aligned with one of the geographic poles.
SITUATIONIST INTERNATIONAL (SI), group of artists, writers, and social critics (1957–72) that aimed to eliminate capitalism through the revolutionization of everyday life. Instead of focusing on traditional sites of economic and social change, such as the factory, the Situationist International (SI) argued that a revolution would take place in the realm of everyday life because the alienating effects of capitalism were pervasive in modern society.
CANALS AND INLAND WATERWAYS, natural or artificial waterways used for navigation, crop irrigation, water supply, or drainage.
Whitley Bay Series A
Findings
These works effectively serve as studies in colour, composition, and technique.
While it's commonly assumed that active seeking is necessary to find something, this isn't always the case. Findings can emerge spontaneously or reveal themselves over time.
In the afternoon (PST) of August 21, 1966, E. Ruscha, M. Williams, and P. Blackwell conducted a 'Royal Road Test,' simultaneously documenting and later publishing its development and results as a booklet. Pieces of the Royal 'Model X' typewriter were scattered along 189 feet of the roadside due to the intentional defenestration of the typewriter at a speed of 90 miles per hour. One of the rare non-typewriter-related objects documented, aside from stones and shrubs, was a piece of a rubber cord.
Another key concept that might be of assistance:
PORTICO, colonnaded porch or entrance to a structure, or a covered walkway supported by regularly spaced columns. Porticoes formed the entrances to ancient Greek temples. <...> The temples so constructed are called henostyle (one column), distyle (two columns), tristyle (three columns), or tetrastyle (four columns). No more than four columns were ever used.
Whitley Bay Series B Part 1
Villa Varzob
This painting is a planimetric graphic interpretation of the design of a house and a garden. Architectural space transformed through the series of reflections and transpositions, explores and questions the Cartesian qualities of the space and how we perceive its scale, distance within, where is right and left, what is front and back and thus, ultimately, if there is future or the past.
Key concepts that might be of assistance:
VILLA, country estate, complete with house, grounds, and subsidiary buildings. The term villa particularly applies to the suburban summer residences of the ancient Romans and their later Italian imitators.
RAIN, precipitation of liquid water drops with diameters greater than 0.5 mm (0.02 inch). When the drops are smaller, the precipitation is usually called drizzle.
MÖBIUS STRIP, a one-sided surface <...> This space exhibits interesting properties, such as having only one side and remaining in one piece when split down the middle.
THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS, book by Lewis Carroll, dated 1872 but actually published in December 1871. <...> Through the Looking-Glass describes Alice’s further adventures as she moves through a mirror into another unreal world of illogical behaviour...
Whitley Bay Series B Part 2
Four Dreams of Hovel
Each of these works is a spatial description of some recollections.
Key concepts that might be of assistance:
OPERA, a staged drama set to music in its entirety, made up of vocal pieces with instrumental accompaniment and usually with orchestral overtures and interludes.
GAUGE, in railroad transportation, the width between the inside faces of running rails. <...> Among notable deviations are Russia’s 5-foot (1.5-metre) gauge, Spain’s 5-foot 6-inch (1.7-metre) gauge, and Japan’s 3-foot 6-inch (1.1-metre) gauge.
LA BREA TAR PITS, tar (Spanish brea) pits, in Hancock Park (Rancho La Brea), Los Angeles, California, U.S. The area was the site of “pitch springs” oozing crude oil that was used by local Indians for waterproofing.
MAUSOLEUM, large, sepulchral monument, typically made of stone, that is used to inter and enshrine the remains of a famous or powerful person. The term mausoleum can also denote other types of aboveground structures used for human burials.
FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE, in Christianity, the four horsemen who, according to the book of Revelation (6:1–8), appear with the opening of the first four of the seven seals that bring forth the cataclysm of the apocalypse.
Tottenham Series A Part 1
Mardi
‘Mardi’ is an imaginary landscape composed of 15 spatial descriptions of some recollections. ‘Mardi: une Clé’ is a ‘key’ that depicts some more figurative graphics, which may help interpet the former painting.
Key concepts that might be of assistance:
FIBULA, outer of two bones of the lower leg or hind limb, presumably so named (fibula is Latin for “brooch”) because the inner bone, the tibia, and the fibula together resemble an ancient brooch, or pin.
ROCK CRYSTAL, transparent variety of the silica mineral quartz that is valued for its clarity and total lack of colour or flaws. Vessels and spheres have been carved from large crystals since ancient times, and the application of the word crystal to fine glassware derives from this practice.
BARBERRY, any of almost 500 species of thorny evergreen or deciduous shrubs constituting the genus Berberis of the family Berberidaceae, mostly native to the North Temperate Zone, particularly Asia.
PORK, flesh of hogs, usually slaughtered between the ages of six months and one year. The most desirable pork is grayish pink in colour, firm and fine-grained, well-marbled, and covered with an outer layer of firm white fat.
Tottenham Series A Part 2
Ganesha Blvd
These two works centre on the concept of an imaginary landscape. Perspective is deliberately eschewed and is replaced by a reduced orthogonal composition resembling a map.
Key concepts that might be of assistance:
GANESHA, elephant-headed Hindu god of beginnings, who is traditionally worshipped before any major enterprise and is the patron of intellectuals, bankers, scribes, and authors.
OUROBOROS, emblematic serpent of ancient Egypt and Greece represented with its tail in its mouth, continually devouring itself and being reborn from itself. A gnostic and alchemical symbol, Ouroboros expresses the unity of all things, material and spiritual, which never disappear but perpetually change form in an eternal cycle of destruction and re-creation.
INSTRUMENT LANDING SYSTEM (ILS), electronic guidance system designed to help airline pilots align their planes with the centre of a landing strip during final approach under conditions of poor visibility.
BAUDOT CODE, telegraph code developed by J.-M.-E. Baudot in France, which by the mid-20th century supplanted the Morse Code for most printing telegraphy.
QUARTZITE, sandstone that has been converted into a solid quartz rock. Unlike sandstones, quartzites are free from pores and have a smooth fracture; when struck, they break through, not around, the sand grains, producing a smooth surface instead of a rough and granular one.
Tottenham Series B
Exteriors
‘Exteriors’ shows a set of views, that might be found in plan in the Whitley Bay Series B Part 2 paintings.
Some additional key concepts, that might be of assistance are:
GIN, flavoured, distilled, colourless to pale yellow liquor made from purified spirits usually obtained from a grain mash and having the juniper berry as its principal flavouring ingredient.
CHAPATI, fried flatbread of Indian origin, often served with vegetables and stew, commonly considered a variation of roti. The word chapatiis derived from the Sanskrit word carpatī, meaning “thin cake,” which is in turn derived from the word carpata or “flat.”
ARCHAEOPTERYX, genus of feathered dinosaur that was once thought to be the oldest known fossil bird. The specimens date to approximately 150 million years ago, during the Late Jurassic Epoch (163.5 million to 145 million years ago), and all were found in the Solnhofen Limestone Formation in Bavaria, Germany.
GINGER, (Zingiber officinale), herbaceous perennial plant of the family Zingiberaceae, probably native to southeastern Asia, or its pungent aromatic rhizome (underground stem) used as a spice, flavouring, food, and medicine.