Lives and works in Almaty, Kazakhstan where he operates as both an
artist and architect. He graduated from the Kazakh State Polytechnical
Institute of Architecture in 1970. As a reflection of this training, his
art tends towards the architectonic while his architectural projects
seem sculptural.
In 1983 he was awarded the honorary title of “Innovator of the USSR”.
His wire woven hanging structures are imbued with an internal
mathematical logic that give an impression of them being discrete
objects in themselves as well as illustrations of the structures of far
off universes. In this respect they echo the hanging objects of the
Constructivist artist Aleksandr Rodchenko (1891-1956) as well as El
Lissitzky’s (1890-1941) series of PROUNS (Projects for the Affirmation
of the New), also made in the 1920s. Kazak Bottle, 1988 is dedicated to
the Cambridge Physicist Stephen Hawking and Mole Holes, 1999 seems to
depict tunnels in both time and space. Tower, 2011, on the other hand,
is like an architectural model and reflects Narynov’s long standing
interest in the structural and philosophical concerns of avant-garde
architecture. The frame of his reference is deliberately wide – from
Tatlin’s Tower, 1919, to the futuristic, utopian, pod-like cities
imagined by the Tokyo-based Metabolism group in the late 1950s and ‘60s.
Saken Narynov’s works have been exhibited in Osaka, Berlin, Lima,
Copenhagen, Lyon and Moscow as well as in Kazakhstan. (Source: http://calvert22.org/artists/saken-narynov/)
