Paradise Garden, 2021

The solo project ‘Paradise Garden’ by Anna Bochkova is situated in a former cellar and passage from the apartment to the flower show, which is now a part of Einstellungsraum exhibition space.

Ceramic sculptures are Bochkova’s fantasies and models of amusement parks of her childhood in post-soviet Russia, through reconstruction of her memory she recaptures the familiar forms but in a changed condition, former carousels developing hypertrophied chains, wheels are getting deconstructed and replaced.

The amusement park and cellar of the flower shop have some similarities in the quality of the space which proposes an escape from reality, which is a no-space in some way and where we find only a short refuge from reality, stay anonymous and lonely.  .

Soil symbolizes the inexperienced and unfulfilled potential which got frozen in the past on the one hand and the new beginning and a fruitful ground for the future beginning. In a way the space of a former flowers cellar cares a metaphor of a portal between past and present, manifesting the uncertain place of contemporaneity.