Architecture des églises

A Russian church is assembled from four solids: cube, arch, onion dome, cross. Everything else is quantity and colour. St Basil's on Red Square is nine churches on one base, each under its own dome; the white cathedrals of Vladimir are one cube and one helmet. Between these extremes lies the whole history of Russian architecture, and it can be told in a single drawing.

The series begins with the drawing. Blue silhouettes of churches on white, as on tracing paper; a cathedral cut along its contour, with red circles for domes; white churches on a black field — the negative of a night city. Then full colour: St Basil's built in volume, with gold-leaf domes, each cupola in its own pattern. From one blue line to a building at full strength — the whole road from sketch to structure, walked within one series.

Relief on artboard, paint, leaf gold on the domes, epoxy resin. The domes are modelled in volume and gilded separately; the ground is poured in layers. The drawing pieces are almost flat, with one line on the ground. The edition is numbered.

A series for a living room, a study, a lobby, an architect's or developer's office. A church on the wall is about order and the vertical, and it reads the same in Moscow and in Dubai.