Anonymous Monument
Part of Points & Lines
Olga Chernysheva
Anonymous Monument, 2008
Painted-aluminum, plastic, wood
9’ x 5’ x 4’ 3”
Courtesy of the artist and Foxy Production
…Hidden within one of the room-like spaces which Canal/Varick creates sits Olga Chernysheva’s (b. 1962; lives and works in Moscow, Russia) Anonymous Monument. Crowning the work is a deceptively small architectural model, which on first glace could be mistaken for the whole installation. As the title suggests, this “monument” commemorates some abstract historic event, such as a transit or escape, by presenting four successive types of miniature fencing that have been violently pierced by four successive holes. This model itself rests atop a small wooden pedestal that rises from a wooden plinth and simulates the typical column plus base structure often used to support heroic statuary. However, since the model itself is quite small, and its apertures even smaller, it is necessary to step-up onto the wooden deck to get a good view. In so doing, this action places the viewer on a stage as part of the work, thus becoming one more in a long chain of “anonymous” persons paying tribute and being commemorated at the same time. It should be noted that the work functions as both an architectural model representing the construction or appearance of something to be built, as well as, being the finished product. As such, Anonymous Monument occupies not only actual built space, but also the space of speculative imagination…
