Nº67: Polina Usenko
Polina recs Pietra Dura, single beds, and Vass.
We’re back with Polina Usenko. Read on to find out what she’s into, and if you’re new here, hit subscribe for secret recommendations every week.
Polina is Exhibitor Manager of The Treasure House Fair, Royal Hospital Chelsea
☞ STAR BURGER: This is a one-man-run spoon (I refuse to associate the word “greasy” with this establishment). Mehmet will greet you, seat you, take your orders all the while running back and forth from the griddle churning out breakfast after breakfast. It is a spectacle of its own. Over the many rattling Sundays we’ve shared we have developed a closeness which can only be described as fatherly. He will run out of the shop if he sees you walking on the other side of the street and wave you over for a catch up. He would ask about university, and in later years about work. One time he quite absurdly presented a crate of apples and almost manically started loading a dozen into a plastic bag for us to take home. All I really know is that he has a daughter who is a doctor and she sometimes comes down on the weekend to help out. All he really knows are the faces of our friends and our bedtime the night before. I haven’t been back since I moved away from Queenstown road, but when my friend Anna was location scouting for a Coke Zero commercial with Isamaya Ffrench I proclaimed - “Star Burger!”
And here is the result: with Mehmet and, of course, the premises starring.
☞ SCREEN TIME: Love it. Can’t get enough of it, really I can’t. 10/10 would recommend. More is more.
☞ DREAMTIGERS - JORGE LUIS BORGES: it’s like being directly behind the eyes of another person. I love that level of absurd intimacy - not an interpersonal one but one residing completely elsewhere. Tell me your dreams and how you miss your dead father’s voice. Who cares about literary swag, this man is my friend.
☞ SINGLE BED: One night in a single bed can briefly reverse years of life. Eyes close and eyes open like during anaesthesia. Here’s a picture from 9pm in April at my friend’s house in Pimlico - this room is called the snooze kingdom and is prescribed twice a year.
☞ PIETRA DURA: One of my favourite techniques in decorative art. It has a long history and many forms, but at its height in the west during the Renaissance, and at huge expense, the inlaid stone forms allegories: of animals, figures, plants, and scenes from mythology. See Jonathan Coulborn’s masterpiece of Orpheus as shown at The Treasure House Fair 2024 (it’s for sale btw).
I love the idea that a material has a destiny of sorts - this buttery slice of marble was always to be the hind leg of a doe, and this strange dappled veiny one, the hide of a wild boar, obviously. Through the eyes of a craftsman (probably plural), incidental access to local and exotic material, stone is chosen and meticulously cut to seamlessly fit a narrative. It’s storytelling for absolute perverts. I was talking about this with Ben at a barbecue in Oxford. He showed me some Byzantine epigrams which are part of his post-doctorate research which feel similar in vibe. One of the examples was a conversation between an elm and a bench with one poetically imploring the other to become itself.
This was written by an orator who’s not a tree and it shifts the relationship between artwork and maker. The last few centuries’ standard of “i am polina and polina made this bench” (signed picasso) just sounds so ridiculous when compared to the idea that someone catalysed a transformation from elm to bench or “inspired” the material into artwork. There’s a smugness somewhere but I like it better.
♪ LISTENING TO: SPACED 28 | VASS
This takes me home. By which I mean every single Uber driver I’ve ever had in the am will have heard this. I practically know this opus by heart, and somewhere in the hour and forty seven minutes you will find a perfect 20 for whatever the night and the postcode. For me it is genetically London; you will stray into various intensities of weirdness but you somehow always end up home. Do cover to cover, but if not start in the late 30s and you will be rewarded by the outro. At some red light you’ll get the awkward turnaround from the driver’s seat - “what are you playing by the way?”. Works better when the Uber is a Tesla.
☠ HATES: bags. Summer’s curse. At my best, I am hands in pockets, light, quick and mean. Phone, keys, AirPods. No establishment which requires my ID is an establishment I really need to frequent. Hand cream was invented by the big bag industry, pass it on.
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Amazing!!
loved this !!