The image of the god Volos

How often does it happen that the gallery takes part in the design of the artist's work? Indeed, sometimes during the exhibition of graphic works or paintings, we help to arrange them. If it's an installation, we can set up a special light, create a unique atmosphere.

And if we are talking about sculpture, more precisely about its final fixation? Usually the artist tries to control as much as possible all the processes that accompany his work. But sometimes fate has its own way.

It has been more than a year since we agreed with the talented craftsman Vladislav Volosenko to create a large-scale wooden sculpture for a landscape project.

The idea of ​​the work is the image of the god Volos (or Veles), a peculiar and unusual object of worship of the ancient Slavs. The author made the primary processing of wood in nature, where a huge, already dry 500-year-old ash tree was found. The artist almost finished work on this massive, almost 3.5-meter sculpture at the end of autumn 2021, leaving it in a woodworking space with his friends. However, the war did not allow to complete the plan. Vladislav went to work in Europe, and we decided to take a chance, install a sculpture and fix the surface of the tree. Leave Volos in his usual forest landscape.

To make such a large-scale sculpture look rough, it was decided to make artificial aging of wood by the method recommended by the artist and which he had previously tested. We will not delve into the chemical subtleties of the process and will not present all the ideas of the author. Within a few days, we prepared the main reagent for coating the work, and before processing, we filled the sculpture with a special catalyst.

The result was completely unexpected, literally a couple of minutes after the treatment with a reagent, the work acquired the shade of burnt wood, as if it were coal that had just been pulled out of an ancient hearth. We will fix this amazing effect in a week, and the patron of cattle, wealth, arts and the underworld will majestically and silently leave the forest, as from his ancient abode.