from the series PETS
2025
medical plastic, fabric
150 x 210 cm
Transcription from the audio guide written by Alina Kleytman:
Ladies and Gentlemen!
Fasten your corsets, straighten your crowns!
Before you stands — Lola.
Yes, that Lola.
The goddess’s domestic shadow.
You didn’t bark. You didn’t purr.
You simply were — and that was enough.
Lola was a gift to the diva from her last — or perhaps her very first — lover:
One of those men whose name is so decadent, it must never be spoken twice in a row.
A love artifact, as if simmered from pure tenderness.
So lift your eyes!
Behold:
An icon of love you never deserved.
And oh, how close they were.
One night, as the diva slept, Lola rose on her hind legs
and quietly removed her own head.
She placed it gently on her beloved’s pillow.
And whispered:
“Here, have two. Just in case.”
Please, your applause.
Slowly.
In time with the breaking of a heart.
Description/commentary
Suspended midair in a theatrical pose, LOLA hovers between creature and myth, love token and tragic muse. Constructed from white medical plastic, the skeletal figure evokes a hybrid anatomy—part animal, part divine ornament—its elegant limbs frozen in a gesture both tender and unnerving.
Drawing from the artist’s poetic fiction, LOLA is introduced as “the goddess’s domestic shadow,” a spectral pet, lover, or relic. Gifted by a mysterious, unnamed suitor, the sculpture becomes a symbol of excessive devotion and self-erasure. With a dramatic twist of dark romance, the creature removes its own head and offers it to its beloved—“Here, have two. Just in case.” The work oscillates between myth and melodrama, eros and absurdity, channeling baroque opulence through minimalist means. In LOLA, Kleytman conjures a being whose presence is both regal and raw, equal parts diva and ghost. A monument to love that is too much, too giving, and ultimately too strange to last.