A bright international talent Liza Bobkova has presented her first solo show in the UK. A new comer to the London contemporary art market Art4 represents the artist. It is the gallery’s second show since the opening at Cromwell Place in January 2024.
The artist works with different mediums starting from total installations; sculpture, to video and drawing pursuing never stopping research on how individuals are socialised in the modern world.
The exposition takes two spacious rooms where fragile objects are carefully placed leading viewers from one piece to another while smoothly submerging them into a network of time symbols.
Restoration of Time continues Liza’s study on material and communication. It features two brand-new series of sculptural works, one in bronze and the other in porcelain. The bronze features 30 etched and polished plaques. The porcelain features 18 asymmetric porcelain squares alongside a porcelain house of cards. Bobkova uses this material to explore our relationship with the linear progression of time. With both metal and ceramics, the process of craftsmanship is often ardours: porcelain hand-rolled paper thin carefully fired to produce delicate sheets; bronze painstakingly engraved with abstract images transcribed from the sound waves of digital voice notes. They maintain an air of fragility distinct from their rugged canvas, just as the porcelain house of cards instils an anxiety reflective of the unstable nature of the present moment. The artwork in both materials is indirect, and the interpretive work of the viewer plays a central role in its messaging. Their minimalist installation encourages the contemplation of these deceptively simple pieces.
Bronze and porcelain works explore Liza’s relationship with temporality. All the works in Restoration of Time are in the form of a document of sorts. Some are mediums for counting days, and others seems to bear a message to the viewer that may not be interpreted since it may not be of our time. Originating from artist’s archives of chats and personal correspondence some stand outphrases have been engraved in the metal plaques or inscribed on the porcelain sheets. Changing the form of the message from written to acoustic and then to engraved Bobkova is documenting faint moments from the past. Grasping the slippery reality that turns into history the artist is questioning the linear progression of time in attempt to find another level by peeling off its multiple layers. By imprinting photographs themes in metal and letting a carving machine to choose the subject as almost leaving it to chance Liza allows for a change to happen in already set object, where secondary can become the primary, and the main is overlooked or blurry. Just as house of cards brings back childhood memories only this time they are charged with new meanings and uncertainties. The rings installation, ephemeral and light, drops its parts to never be reattached again as almost counting the moments.
Bobkova grew up in Soviet Russia, near the border with Latvia. She graduated from the Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design, Russia’s oldest design school. In 2023 Liza Bobkova moved from Russia to the UK, where she opened Art4 in London. She has been inspired by her husband and gallery’s co-founder Igor Markin, the founder of ART4 museum – Moscow’s largest private contemporary art space.
“I am delighted to support Liza in this new endeavour. I believe that she is a charismatic artist and curator who can develop a unique curatorial vision that would involve not only more diverse types of art in terms of materials used, but a diverse set of international artists” Igor Markin.
The exhibition runs from 13 March to 24 March 2024.
