The stone-carved work ” Pupa” is an adaptation in a new material of one of Sergei Falkin’s bronze works. The first work of the same name was created for the exhibition at the Nabokov Museum. The writer’s passion for butterflies inspired the sculptor to create this image: the museum has an outstanding collection of butterflies that Vladimir Nabokov collected throughout his life.
The image in the stone appeared many years later, when the artist got his hands on a pellet of nephrite that had been washed by the river for hundreds of years and infused with natural elements, as a result of which it acquired a special form, a unique texture and rich colors. This pellet is like a cocoon from nature, freeing itself from which an anthropomorphic butterfly looks out into the world with curiosity and hope in its eyes.
For Sergey Falkin the pupa is an allegory of transformation and birth. And not only the birth of a fleetingly beautiful butterfly from a cocoon, but also the emergence from the originally rough, unworked, dusty piece of stone – a unique author’s sculpture. The master intentionally left traces of nature on the surface of nephrite: these dark, rust-like, rugged to the touch spots reproduce the texture of the real cocoon. This attention to the peculiarities of the material also demonstrates the master’s method of work. Sergey Falkin likes to say that the stone is his “co-author”, and ” Pupa” is a vivid confirmation of this: the natural texture and color of nephrite inspired the plasticity created by the author, when he was choosing approaches to the image of the future sculpture.
