Kepler-186f Messaging Chair

I’ve been making experiments trying to combine various technics and
forms. I was looking for new ways in my works. I wanted to present a
special feeling of amazement and joy, to make a surprising memorable
object as if delivered by a fantasy novel heroes from a different planet.
Yet I was thinking not about a knick-knack or a souvenir but something
practical and useful in our daily matters.

Kepler 186f is my improvisation. It can be varied; it has a certain
indefinite character. It is possible, if someone is interested, to develop
a more laconic and strict design based on Kepler 186f. One may find out
more perfect forms of its parts, to better synchronize the rhythm of its
armature or even to completely get rid of the armature. It is possible to
develop the idea of Kepler with the other objects made in a more strict
style adopted at the minimalist surroundings. However it is quite possible
on the basis of Kepler to develop more fanciful objects, which would look
more like pieces of art. They would less have in common with Kepler in
style but more with new efficient and unique decisions.

When I was making a lamp for my friend’s desk I did not have any other
commitments. I had spare time and was making experiments with various
ideas. The idea of the Kepler armchair emerged just at that time. This
idea overwhelmed me completely. I even stopped doing anything else before
finishing up my Kepler.

At the moment my design is not used in production by anyone. If I
receive an offer I would be happy to sell it to a production company. I –
individually or with a team - can also develop this design in various
objects or products. Yet I will not make another exact copy of Kepler - 186f
myself.

It has happened in a natural way. Once I was going to make a model of a
small sculpture on the motifs of one of my almost abstract graphic work. I
decided to make a wire frame. I did not even notice when this frame turned
into a self-sufficient object. It would be sad to cover it with paper and
plasticine. I felt that it was just producing new ideas. I played with its
shadow and in half an hour I saw a future back of an armchair Kepler-186f.
I could find a good angle, made a picture, used a Paint programme to draw
a colourful back and something like wooden elbow-rests. The idea on the
upper side of the chair emerged very quickly. When I started working on
Kepler I just wanted to make its model 1x3. Yet in the end I’ve decided to
make details bigger, in a natural size.

I would like to add some words about the choice of wire. Several years ago
I worked on various lamps making models from paper and drawing something.
Yet when I started using wire for the models I felt as if I was on
“American mountains”. It seemed that the material throws you to new ideas
with a great power.

I unfortunately cannot remember (and could not find in internet the
objects and the authors) those who influenced my decisions while working
on Kepler. I can only approximately tell what I recall. Several years ago
I found an album on furniture design at a bookstore and noticed an
interesting decision for a joint of loading platform with a table leg with
a use of a brass module. The table was white and perhaps from a period of
1930s. It was made and is located in the US. It is likely that my choice
of Kepler’s brass joints is connected with that memory.

When I had modeled preliminary replicas of the carved legs of the Kepler
armchair they had round-shaped extensions that were getting more narrow.
And as a result at least one of the legs look like an anatomic model of a
human heart. In order to avoid those unnecessary associations I recalled
something from contemporary design of jewelries. It used the aesthetics of
various simple castes including those of square forms with no inserted
stones. A lady jeweler created this design most likely from the USA.

The idea of the brass sphere just in the middle of the back of the
armchair was inspired by the experiments with jewelries of my senior
colleague in our workshop artist Andrei Efimov. The ancient Vikings’
styles Broa and Mammen affected one of the elbow-rests with interweave
ornament.

The article Kepler – 186f that I have presented for this competition
can be interesting first of all for the collectors. Yet I clearly see that
it is possible using the same methods as in the armchair Kepler to make
another model with more simple, laconic and democratic design for both
individual and public spaces. This more democratic version would likely be
interesting for private persons and for institutions.

It is perhaps a natural combination of jeweler’s technics, of sophisticated carving, of painting and needle-work with the solid steel “architectural” fittings - all in one object.

I could not find an appropriate name for quite a while. In the end the
features of the armchairs’ design and my associations encouraged me to
compare my object with Exoplanet Kepler-186f.

Kepler-186f is the first identified planet of the same size as the Earth
outside our Sun system. It is within the sphere of its’ own star where
life is theoretically possible.

From one side the Kepler armchair reflects the description of a remote
planet or a drawing that an artist delivered to our world after his travel
to a world unknown. Indeed the Kepler armchair is one of those objects,
which image I took from my draft.

From the other side the possibility of life on the Kepler planet reflects
the “liveliness”, “presence of a living soul” in the armchair. This object
is a result of improvisation.

If we talk about the chair Kepler – 186f then it is a hand made and very precise job in various aspects from the beginning till the end. I think that what is particularly important in the Kepler’s design is the logic of the making of the form in its greatest freedom. It presents an opportunity to model new forms again and again. It is like moist clay from which one can make many different objects. It is like a crossroad from which one can start his way to any direction that he likes. And still one can return to this crossroad to take a way very different.

Yes, I requested some help. First, I was helped to glue drafts of oak
details for carving. In my workshop it would be difficult to reach a high
quality in this joining.
Then, according to my recommendations and using my drafts an artist on
costumes Olga Teben’kova sewed a cover for a seat and a soft back of the
armchair. However, an initial logic of the composition was slightly
disturbed. Yet this minor inaccuracy suddenly introduced a certain graphic
absurd in my job, a mad spirit of vanguard, as if a funny picture of a. dog
or a crow in the mathematic formula.

No, while making Kepler I have not used any research or data. My work was rather influenced by my personal emotions and my own experience in making various objects of arts and design. When from a chaos of sketches and vague ideas you for the first time suddenly see the clear image of the future object you feel the same as Archimedes with his “Eureka!”, a certain internal admiration mixed with joy and amazement. If you succeed in incarnation of your image into a real object you have an opportunity to hear from the first observers as if an echo of your own original emotions.

Yet in the world of arts it is naturally often more complicated for the depth and the spectrum of emotions are enormous. When outrage and anger are openly displayed in the object it can simply frighten and shock spectators.

Sometimes when a weird stubbornness of an artist wins in my head a battle against a designer’s pragmatism I take strange, irrational decisions. When I work with small interesting details I often take them home where sometimes I feel a serious pressure from my family about the image and possible use of those details. Once while making a small table with human figures I took home a realistic smiling face created from a tusk of a mammoth. The face had emphatically stylish curling eyebrows. Those “frowning” eyebrows on originally nice, cheerful face made it somewhat frightening. My wife tried her best to persuade me to remove the eyebrows or at least to make them smaller. In the end I refused to completely get rid of them because of some unknown reasons. Yet this very small strange detail could effect the entire impression of the whole object.

The Kepler chair had a different story. My senior colleague with whom a share our workshop noticed that the armature of the chair’s legs could not necessarily be entirely hidden within the brass stands. It could – just like a falling drop of water – make waves with a small conical rise in the middle. I found this idea rather interesting. Plus in the end of the cone I decided to make from wire a sphere of this “drop” in the form of a nightcap with a pompon. While soldering the sphere I thought that I could insert a smaller coloured glass bubble into this wire pompon. And when I deflected this cone with the bubble from the centre towards the leg it immediately became “alive” and a human figure emerged. I added several details and got a touching and very laconic sculpture. My wife and daughter liked it so much that they gave it a name. They still criticize me again and again that I have refused their numerous requests and according to my original plan inserted the sculpture into a leg where it is difficult even to notice it. In my view the sculpture was making the image of the leg somewhat confusing while a simple cone just improved the general impression and emphasized my idea. Perhaps my asinine stubbornness is a result of many visits of various “market experts” and “sales promoters” who were coming to my workshop trying to convince me that I was making nonsense at a time when the carved wooden state symbols or coloured birds on nice stands were in great demand.

Armchair is an improvisation. In the beginning I only had upper part of the chair in my mind. Therefore, I had to work on feet with chair being inverted, which initially seemed like an obstacle, but later it helped formed the end design.
The improvisational nature lead me to experimentation, which besides setbacks, gave me breakthroughs both in design and manufacturing process. At times I felt weak, but inevitably a powerful solution presented itself. “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
As an example if the wire was welded together with brass bushings and nickel-plated, the sculpture would have been stronger and lighter, however I am not regretting finding alternate solution, since aesthetically it is also interesting, but on top of it its unique.
Absence of access to welding, led me to seek structural rigidity in woven construction techniques, in wire crossing and wire ties, which eventually opened my eyes to the beauty, strength and awe-inspiring opportunities that arose from seemingly simplistic solutions.

I work in a common workshop together with other artistsof different styles. If I had opened to them my plan about this chair, I would risk losing such necessary courage and inspiration, and start doubting under the pressure of their reasoning. The fact that I put aside another almost ready to sell commercial object for the sake of the tin soldering of wire could look like madness for my colleagues. So, it was necessary to keep focus, communicating only through artwork. A month later, one of the artists said that my contraptions might make an interesting furniture, I have opened up about the direction of my art. Initially, my idea seemed so mad, that it felt like launching a space craft and any little detail could have led to a disastrous crash.

I think my present environment has limits in the developments of
artistic talents. I wanted to find some other opportunities and my
participation in this competition is one of the steps in this way.

Many different ideas and various information emerge when you take a good time working on something experimental and original, just not necessarily in design. I can tell about some ideas and actions that were produced when Kepler was being created.

1) I’ve got a new experience. Previously I was never making this kind of furniture from wire. So I think it is even an advantage that I had to create various details already during the process of making. Indeed only the first practical steps in building the project often tell what would be a further development. If you don’t have a serious experience you can’t predict those developments and have all details in your preliminary sketches.

2) I could not use wielding and had to find all durability in plaiting, in crossing units and in stitches. I gradually discovered certain rules and principals of steel wire constructions. I suddenly learned about a beauty and powerful striking opportunities in seemingly very simple decisions.

3) At some point during the work process I wanted to make the construction more stable. I decided to build connections between the legs as it often used in normal furniture but in a new and unusual form. Hence I’ve got an idea of interweaved knots of “wormholes” that run throw the legs and end up as a small sphere. I think it is a very productive idea for both design and arts. This kind of model can be a natural part of a construction as well as a form of sculpture.

4) I continuously cherished an idea of a wooden object with broken construction connected by metal knots. Making Kepler I realized that it is possible to use wire in this plan.

5) While improvising I’ve got interesting variants of sculptures with the use of wire, glass, beads and pieces of brass. One of those small figures with symbolic features is inserted into a back leg of the chair. The other one was too big for a leg and I’ve made a separate bigger funny object - an insect with wings and a smartphone in her paw sitting on a special stand.

In the symbolic figure I tried a new method - brass pieces connecting as if it is a chessboard. It was one of the most eccentric and labour-consuming possible ways of making the Kepler chair. I had to refuse it for it was too much job to do alone.

6) One of the elbow-rests ends up on the back of the chair with a “sola prominence” where the wooden form splits throw brass bushes on the streams of armature. I had three variants for this composition and one of them – with the use of some other details of the chair – produced the following idea: I could rather realistically make transparent sculptures of reptiles and fishes with scales. A technology of soldered netting would be used. The square netting is needed for reptiles and for fish scales I would solder netting as diamonds. One may reach interesting effects of forms connecting parts of those sculptures with wire into units. It is easier to imagine as an impression on a wire net of the surface of water with a reptile partly sticking out. Those netted surfaces with animals sticking out might be inserted in furniture as well as in walls and windows of houses instead of gratings or fences. Those figures can stick out only a little but can be emerging almost entirely (for example, a figure of a lizard climbing on a net where only, say, two legs are under the net surface). Those sculptures can be made very realistically but also perhaps in a stylization way. Here an artist may use a wire of various thickness and in some places a glass and different metals. In the end it can be a human sculpture or even an abstraction.

7) If you turn Kepler upside down its legs look like armature columns ending up with asymmetrical monolithic capitals. I think that their transparency and plastic freedom can produce many unconventional ways of using them in architecture. Asymmetrical capitals can be easily used not only with the horizontal crossbeam but also with the inclined one. The plastic freedom of armature columns while preserving their functions opens many unconventional or even grotesque variants. For example, I see a column staying on one foundation but splitting above on two parts and having two or even three capitals. Or two columns stay on two foundations but merge above into one column with a capital where the pair of columns forms an arch. Or one column can split and make a circle (or any other geometrical figure) inside and then again merge into one column with a capital etc. It is important that transparent columns would not cover the view around or internal spaces and interiors. At the same time a monolithic capital would suggest a reference to the tradition of classicism.

8) I’ve got an interesting result – in various ways – in the form behind the wooden sit. What I produced is in fact a self-sufficient object somehow reminding a shaman’s tambourine. This idea can be developed in the field of contemporary arts.

9) I used the Kepler chair to express one of my deep convictions. In the nineteenth century in the remote cave in Altamira, Spain, the scholars discovered wonderful ancient drawings. Soon the idea that we can consider as belonging to the world of arts only those works that were purposely created for a broad audience became well spread. I think this idea produces rather outrageous conclusion that excludes from the arts broadly recognized masterpieces that were created, for example, for the funeral rites. In my arguments against those views I put inside the chair my spontaneously emerged works that have become practically unnoticeable. They symbolically tell about the idea that arts can still belong to the world of arts whatever the plan of the author or its access to the broad public.

I think this inspiration came from ancient and medieval art, objects from the Oseberg ship, and the church at Urnes. When a functional element, seemingly rough-hewn with an axe from a tree trunk, unexpectedly ends in refined, delicate carving.

The freeform shape of the chair’s legs became a natural continuation of its already woven frame. If the legs were made separately, they would most likely be uniform and lack the wooden detailing. From some angles, they might appear awkward, but they give the chair a certain "animalistic" dynamism. As one acquaintance put it, "It feels like this chair is about to start walking on its own."

When I began working on the chair, I underestimated the strength of the chosen technique and its structural flexibility. If I had known this in advance, I could have reduced the amount of wire to the bare minimum needed for the chair to support the weight of a human body. But things turned out differently.At first, I thought it was crucial to prevent the front part of the chair's backrest from bending when someone leaned against it. Over time, it became clear that the emerging structure had a very rigid framework. Had I removed some of the wire from the backrest, I could have easily maintained its rigidity by simply adding a through connection closer to the middle of the backrest. Aesthetically, this could have been an even more interesting solution. For example, there could have been openings in the place of two rectangular cutouts left in the soft padding of the backrest. If these through openings extended into the wire frame, revealing the thickness of the entire backrest instead of wire mesh, it would add depth to the perception of the fabric-covered design. I only recognized this possibility at the end of the work and decided not to change anything by then.It’s hard to convey, without visual aids, the beauty or strength of certain nodes that are best seen in photographs taken during the chair's construction. For the stretchers (upper frame supports), I used a closed volume made of loops of varying heights oriented in opposite directions. This resembled a fish body with diamond-shaped scale-like cells. At the same time, it was both a visually appealing and structurally reliable approach.This wire technique is characterized by unity and freedom, unlike the woodworking methods I am familiar with. A reliable woodworking joint requires reinforcement through tenons, dowels, clamps, and consideration of wood grain direction. In contrast, the woven part of the chair is a single wire fabric, just tightly twisted in certain places. Any additional through connection within the wire fabric adds strength to the structure. Moreover, we are free to create such a connection almost anywhere within the given volume, without exceeding its boundaries.

Honestly, all the plant-like, anthropomorphic, and zoomorphic imagery in the design of the chair was not initially planned. These were interpretations discovered by the first viewers who saw the chair during its creation. The distinctly zoomorphic features that influenced the chair's name emerged through improvisation with the legs, which began to resemble the limbs of a walking hoofed animal. This added a sense of liveliness and vitality to Kepler-186f.That said, one anthropomorphic detail was embedded in the rear leg of the chair. Like a "thing within a thing," it exists as its own distinct element, akin to a figurine placed inside a cabinet. Another human-like detail only remains in photographs taken during the creation process and has completely disappeared in the finished piece.The uncharted path of improvisation always reveals an unexpected network of branches, trails, and parallel roads—often even more enigmatic and unpredictable than what seemed visible at the outset. Creative energy, which sparks new ideas, permeates the process of creating a new piece, much like radiation in a radioactive element, present until its decay (completion of the work). It is during this process that the brightest and most surprising flashes occur—winds that scatter the seeds of new ideas. When working on an intriguing concept, one must always remember that it exists amidst a "pile" of similar ideas. At that moment, you are so focused on extracting this particular idea that you barely notice the multitude of others accompanying it. If these accompanying ideas remain unrecorded during the process of "extraction," you will most likely lose them forever—when the endless array of possibilities suddenly condenses into the final, compact form of the finished product.Most of the chair’s shapes are non-representational and abstract. I believe that abstraction, in most cases, is merely a type of ornament—ornament without narrative, characters, plant fragments, or the like. This explains its almost instant spread in 20th-century design.The lack of explicit specifics in abstract forms generates entirely different associations among viewers of the chair. Some see an elephant in the backrest, while others see a fish. Some may perceive it as drying fishing nets entangled with autumn leaves. For this reason, it’s better not to tie these forms directly to the idea of Kepler-186f.

In the end, I have much to reflect on and discuss. My creative experience has expanded. Had I, for practical reasons, suppressed my inspiration and, as Vladimir Mayakovsky once vividly put it, "stepped on the throat of my own song," I would have risked emptying my inner world.

Perhaps human creativity itself, in some ways diverging from earthly nature, is evidence of the existence of other worlds. This inner cosmos within a person reveals itself through the creation of new objects and works of art. Such is one of the ideas behind the Kepler-186f chair.The chair also contains a hidden argument against an early 20th-century notion that anything not made for an audience cannot be considered art. Yet it is evident that we have numerous ancient ritual and funerary masterpieces that were clearly not created for exhibition spaces. In challenging this idea, I symbolically concealed a human figurine within the chair.

Voyager is a symbol of flight into the uncharted depths of the creative cosmos. It represents an attempt to show how an artist’s inspiration can bring extraordinary objects and works of art into existence from a single small sketch.The idea for the chair emerged during the process of translating the graphics of one of my sketches into a three-dimensional structure, carrying many of its features and details. It arose from the cosmos of that drawing, just as distant objects first emerged from the darkness of space in Voyager’s photographs.The concept of naming and presenting the chair Kepler-186f as an object from real space came later, in the final stages. However, I must admit that the original sketch was inspired by a photograph of a spiral galaxy taken by the Hubble telescope. The reflection of that spiral is present in several details of the chair. Additionally, the wire fabric with its wormhole-like openings is essentially an analog to the visual models of gravitational fields in astrophysics.

After receiving the award for the chair, I created a wire bench in a simplified version of the Kepler-186f technique. As a result, I accumulated detailed groundwork for innovative furniture designs. However, due to current circumstances, I am working alone to complete another extremely complex project and currently have no opportunity to continue creative experiments with furniture.

Everything happened in reverse order. Initially, I was finishing the chair’s legs while it was upside down. As the legs began to take their final shape, they unexpectedly started to resemble four columns with asymmetrical capitals.