The Regents Art Foundation  present contemporary sculptors Unus Safardiar and Sean Henry in the groundbreaking Gate of Multiplicity exhibition at   Queen Mary’s Gardens, Inner Circle, Regent’s Park, London from 27th June till 27th November 2007.
The aim of the show is to spearhead the establishment in London of an annual showcase for contemporary sculptors from Britain and all round the world.
The exhibition coincides with the 75th Anniversary of the opening of the Queen Mary’s Gardens. Both artists seek to explore the craft of sculpture as a means of transforming space.

Safardiar deploys mirrored surfaces in an attempt to capture parallel realities, and Henry offers a singular sparseness of subject matter where arrested movement becomes a moment of frozen reality,   which invites the onlooker to become part of the tableau. 
Project curator Inna Khegay says: “We see our mission as fostering the work of struggling talented young sculptors.
We would like Regent’s Park to be the centre for creative, innovative art.”

Unus Safardiar (b. 1968, USSR)
 
“I feel modern art is like a headless chicken running around without any sense of direction. I want to change that and give it a new sense of purpose.
They say that the line between genius and evil is three millimetres. Pop culture doesn’t deal with millimetres; it majors with kilometres so there is no difference between talent and mediocrity. I hate mediocrity. That’s why in the West where everything is based on sensation people stopped celebrating beauty. We need to create new forms, new beauty”.

“My sculpture is my life. There was a period when I just wanted to surprise, and then at the age Christ died I realised what I really wanted was to transform space, explore an alternative reality and connect past, present and future.” 

Sean Henry (b. 1965, England)

It's very exciting putting works in a public zone. Primarily because you feel they’re still functioning, they have a role.
It's exciting from a creator's point of view in seeing people coming across them for the first time and engaging with them.
At Holland Park (West London) I chose the site in the winter when it was bare trees and looked beautiful for a solitary walking figure on a concrete path. But of course in the summer the trees are full of leaves and it became quite dark on that site and the figure definitely became more threatening than he did in the winter, which was something I had not anticipated. 

The context is everything, and increasingly I am becoming   aware of the theatricality of sculpture, and the inherent potential that presents to the artist.
There are interesting links between sculpture and theatre, and there are good examples in the past of sculpture being used very theatrically, for example the group sculpture Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Niccolò Dell'Arca in Bologna.
The interaction of the viewer with the work – the third element - will be integral to the show and its success.”