Kirill Ukolov

Born 1979 in Moscow, he lives and works in Toulouse.

Echoing the programme devised by Anne Pontégnie, the Lemniscate gallery is hosting Kirill Ukolov, an alumnus of the École des Beaux-arts de Toulouse. His installation 0.2 m3/h, made using heated strips of plastic film, gradually grew and grew, eventually occupying nearly the whole gallery. The material, which sometimes appears stratified, sometimes vegetal, has taken on the imprint of the walls and, as it hardened, became a “fossil” of the space. Too bulky to be removed whole, this cumbrous volume will be cut into sections that evoke artificial plants, samples of minerals and fragments of the earth’s crust. In the course of a performance, a large number of autonomous works will thus be extracted from the installation, just as blocks of marble are extracted from the mountains of Carrara.

Using a chainsaw, the artist will extract a piece of his monumental work and place it on a pedestal, thereby initiating the process whereby, as the exhibition continues, the work will be divided up into sculptures of varying sizes, offered for sale and cut to measure.