Unique piece 1/1 manufactured in SwitzerlandBetween Haute Horlogerie and contemporary art: Coprolite
Stunning transmutations fuelled by boundless creativity embody Artya's signature. Always brimful of ideas and thoroughly steeped in contemporary art, Yvan Arpa launches a new venture out of the blue, and presents an horological creation crowned with a dinosaur's coprolite dial.
When it comes to daring innovation, Yvan Arpa is forever ahead and sets the trend for others to follow. He sublimates controversial materials and harnesses untamed elements in his creative processes. Rust, dust, and toad skin are turned into luxury icons, while lightning furiously engraves its mark on bare steel. Today the spotlight is on coprolite. He brandishes these fossilized feces in his pioneering style, raising this paleontological curiosity to the status of a work of art.
A relic of the Jurassic period, it has taken millions of years for this organic substance to embrace its present warm and matchless tints. Designed with an understated aesthetic sense, the dial is free of indexes or any other pointless features. In its mineral aspect, it forcefully underscores the pristine strength emanating from the very dawn of life. As a true memento, it is encircled in a round case sculpted in stainless steel grade 316 or, as an affirmation to its prehistoric lineage, in bronze with its characteristic blazing hues.
In the manner of all Artya collections, the watchcase is considered as a challenging arena for excelling in decoration. Entirely manufactured in the secrecy of the Guer Man workshops tucked away in Ticino, Manuel Zanetti has chiseled, engraved and hammered away to obtain masculine and grainy curves and patterns. With plenty of character, the case makes a firm statement by an impressive architectural array of bold, contrasting volumes that enhance its generous proportions to perfection.
Water resistant up to 30 meters, this outstanding timepiece houses a self-winding mechanical movement that beckons to the eye through its open caseback. It is clad with a deep black American cane toad strap fitted with an ardillon buckle. True to Artya’s leading concept in which difference not conformity is the hallmark and uniqueness the abiding principle, the Coprolite is anchored at the juncture between Haute Horlogerie and contemporary art.