The installation Table for One was commissioned by Garage and inspired by the artist’s personal experience of observing visitors to Garage Café.
Artem Lyapin works with pencil and printing and with weaving fabric and metal lace. Lyapin’s optics are those of a modern romantic hero. Having returned to his parents' home after his marriage broke up and faced with the need to re-establish himself there, Artem turned to carpet weaving in 2020 and drew and published the book I Think This Love Will Last Forever (2024).
The hero reassembles himself in the landscape of the big city, exploring his own loneliness not so much against the backdrop of history or nature but in the context of a relentlessly growing array of personal and intellectual connections that require a particular labor in terms of appropriation or severance. Lyapin’s character clings to a craft that requires methodicalness and meticulousness and to myth-making as a mantra.
One of the elements of the Museum building is a staircase that today leads nowhere and ends with a glass ceiling. Next to it there is usually a table for two, but most often one person sits there. In the installation, the situation is slightly reversed: the intermediate staircase landing becomes an official territory of seclusion—only one chair can be placed by the table.
The furniture, retaining its external appearance, is exposed. It shows its copper frame or, on the contrary, takes on a copper covering. The color of copper, which the artist achieves through a series of laborious chemical manipulations, symbolizes blood or purifying fire. The lace —for the artist it is «always about love”—is made of metal and becomes a barbed net. It took more than two months to weave. The monotonous and long labor involved manifests the fear of loneliness, which can be constraining and limiting or can be felt in everyday choices, like the exquisite shadow cast by a metal cone. Finding its embodiment, this fear gradually dissipates. The manifesto/transplant on the Museum balcony, the opportunity be alone, will likely become an act of liberation for the viewer. This is how the artist sees his work.
Artem Lyapin
Table for One, 2025
Installation (furniture, copper sheet, copper wire, book)