My boat is bent, this stairway leads to heaven and I swing on
meteoric dreams
Some exhibitions behave. This one tilts.
In My boat is bent, this stairway leads to heaven and I swing on meteoric dreams, Marius Ritiu
constructs a speculative environment where gravity seems negotiable and matter remembers
having been something else in a previous galaxy. At the center of the space stand three
monumental sculptures in hand-hammered copper. They do not illustrate a story. They appear as
if they have landed mid sentence.
The first form resembles a vessel that has survived a cosmic detour. Its curvature makes one
think that time itself pressed a thumb into its side. It feels less like a boat meant for water and
more like a craft designed to navigate density, memory, or the heavy atmosphere of doubt. The
copper surface carries the marks of repeated blows, a constellation of gestures that record labor
as rhythm. It is both relic and prototype.
The second sculpture rises vertically, invoking the promise of ascension. A stairway, perhaps,
though not one that obeys architectural logic. It climbs without asking permission from the floor,
suggesting that heaven might simply be a change of frequency. The steps seem to dissolve as
they rise, turning structure into vibration. In this universe, transcendence is engineered by hand.
The third form arcs through the space with the looseness of a swing suspended in orbit. It
captures a moment of suspension, as if caught between launch and return. There is play here, but
it is the kind of play that happens on the edge of catastrophe or revelation. The copper glows like
condensed sunlight, as though fragments of meteors were melted and reassembled into a dream
apparatus.
Together, the three sculptures establish a terrain where the monumental becomes unstable and
the absurd feels strangely precise. Copper, a material historically tied to conductivity and
transmission, becomes a carrier of speculative energy. It reflects the viewer back in distorted
flashes, turning the audience into passing comets within the installation.
The exhibition reads like a dispatch from a future archaeology. These objects could be remnants
of a civilization that mistook poetry for engineering and built its infrastructure accordingly. Or
they could be tools for navigating an interior cosmos, where boats bend under invisible pressure,
stairways refuse to end, and dreams swing in slow, meteoric arcs.
Here, the absurd is not decorative. It is structural. The works insist that logic is only one possible
material among many. In Ritiu’s universe, copper thinks, space wavers, and sculpture becomes a
vehicle for leaving the ground without ever quite departing.
In collaboration with: Objects With Narratives is a gallery dedicated to contemporary artists whose work is rooted in material exploration and craftsmanship. Representing an international group of artists who reinterpret traditional techniques through a contemporary lens, the gallery highlights practices where process, gesture, and material carry narrative meaning.
This approach resonates strongly with the work of Marius Ritiu, whose hand-hammered copper sculptures transform labor, material memory, and poetic imagination into monumental forms that seem suspended between function, architecture, and dream. Through exhibitions and collaborations with collectors, designers, and institutions worldwide, Objects With Narratives supports artists whose works expand the expressive possibilities of contemporary design and sculpture.