The Forked Stick of Sculeanca will be 25 this year. Let’s go!
This unusual little park of sculptures is a unique place in Chisinau because there is no place like it. Many experts of alternative art. foreigners and local skeptics want to come here. This place of land is covered with metal sculptures. It is unique for other people who understand the value of daring artists who worked in the Soviet Period of time when everything was forbidden. “The Forked Stick of Sculeanca” will be 25 this year. Let’s go! It is not far. It is situated on the left side of the lake of Sculeanca in the park near cartodrome. It is easy to find. You have to ask: “Where I can find sculptures’ studios.” You may go left from the restaurant “La Izvor” until you see strange but attractive sculptures that can tell you a long story.
RUST
Nikolai Iskimji is the author of the idea of the park and the sculpture of many of the works. He doesn’t call his works “sculptures”. The exposition “The Forked Stick of Sculeanca” (it was called so many years ago) is””the multidimensional spatial graphic arts” as Nikolai defines it. He is “the man who models the space”.
Some time ago Nikolai was a lecturer in the Polytechnic Institute. At the same time someone from sculptures placed his studio in a building, presumably, it was the building of a former toy-factory situated in the park of Sculeanca. You caa’t call this construction “the building”. It was a one-storied house with a very long facade resembling the barracks. After some time other artists came to this place and the house was officially given to the artists. The territory in front of the building was given for the exposition of the works of Art.
Nikolai often visited sculptures in Sculeanca. He made friends with Valerii Moshkov who left Moldova to live in Germany in 2001. They had grandiose plans to change something at the time of their friendship. Nikolai wanted to experiment. Valerii liked the idea. The first arrangement they made together and finished it with 8 more works later.
The first arrangement consisted of 6 balls and was called “The Conformism”. Why did they put balls and why did they put only 6 balls? Valerii Moshkov who had a nickname “uncle” liked to use a quote “six balls” which means “easy to get, to make or to fulfill”. So they immortalized this quote in their work. It was 1984. It was the irony.
The architect remembers time when Valerii worked at the Arts Enterprise and Nikolai had vacation because he was a student on summer vacation. He took the bicycle and rode several kilometers (or maybe several tens of kilometers) to the storage pond Ghidighici. There was a real Klondike for the gatherers of the waste material. Nikolai transported on his bicycle old tubes, parts of usual and unusual forms into the Arts’ studios. He brought a few tons there. When Valerii came from work in the evening at 6 o’clock they began working with metal.
The arrangement that they have been building till the 1989 was called “the Rust“. It is a pun in the Russian language which is produced by the word “rust” (or “rjavchina” in Russian). It means spoiled authorities. It was the answer of the artists on the events taking place in the country. It was the irony with which sculptures treated these events.
