The renowned watchmaker-artist’s new painting appears at Dubai Watch Week 2025 before going to auction in December.Related ArticlesBritish Museum Snuffs Out Tobacco Sponsorship over Concerns Related to International Health PactSotheby's Kicks Off Day Sales with Lauder Auction Totaling $3.84 M., Led by Oldenburg SculptureExtraordinary art often begets an extraordinary origin story. The provenance of an artwork is in many cases inseparable from the work itself; time and iteration blur details, and without the voice of the creator to shape the narrative, the story of an artwork crystallizes into myth.Russian watchmaker and artist Konstantin Chaykin, on the other hand, is writing his own mythos — or rather, painting it — in real time. His new artwork, A Mad Horological Party, publicly debuts at Dubai Watch Week November 19-23 before it goes to auction through Ineichen Auctioneers on December 13, and is a testament to a singular chapter in Chaykin’s emerging dual career.Courtesy of Konstantin ChaykinChaykin is a recognized master of haute horlogerie, evidenced by membership in the Academy of Independent Creators in Watchmaking (AHCI), a World Intellectual Property Organization Gold Medal, and inclusion in the Temporis Hall of Fame. He holds more than a hundred patents for his inventions — from the world’s thinnest mechanical wristwatch to Russia’s most complicated watch to the iconic Wristmons series, including the first-ever self-portrait wristwatch.Chaykin’s innovations have become cultural references that organically expand into painting. His portfolio of original timepieces expresses a creative vision that marries lofty imagination with mechanical precision. Characters from popular culture and mythology — from Minions to the Minotaur — often feature in his Wristmons watches, where traits from those inspirational subjects are cleverly integrated into the details of the watch’s function.Courtesy of Konstantin ChaykinUnsurprisingly, Chaykin’s technical expertise naturally extends into contemporary art. A gifted visual artist from childhood, he forwent a formal education as a painter to pursue his watchmaking craft. He remains a prolific draftsman, however, and Chaykin’s original sketches of his watch concepts have been offered at auction since 2022.His paintings, meanwhile, offer a more expansive view into his creative world. Chaykin’s canvases grow from a proprietary method built on geometry, precise calculations, hidden symmetries and philosophical perspective, forming a new branch of academicism where classical drawing is reinterpreted through scientific rigor. In his idiomatic language, real-life timepieces and elements of the watchmaking craft are reimagined as anthropomorphic subjects. The painting Ahasuerus (2023), for example, was inspired by a component of the “perpetual calendar” complication of one of Chaykin’s watches, which uncannily resembles the form of a person walking, and takes its name from the Biblical myth of the Eternal Wanderer.A Mad Horological Party, Chaykin’s latest painting, is anchored in his imagined universe while stretching its scope even further. The painting directly evokes — and is presented in parallel with — one of Chaykin’s most ambitious watchmaking projects to date: White Rabbit, a horological marvel consisting of sixteen complications, making it one of the most functionally elaborate wristwatches in the history of the craft.Courtesy of Konstantin ChaykinBoth artwork and timepiece reference Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, a literary touchstone that resonates with the whimsical spirit of Chaykin’s creations and centers time (and timekeeping) as a core theme. The title of A Mad Horological Party is a direct quote from the novel and an allusion to the Mad Hatter’s tea party, and indeed, it’s a familiar guest list. Rendered in his signature hues of ochre, gray, blue and red (the “watchmaker’s palette”), the painting depicts mechanized interpretations of the Dormouse, March Hare, Mad Hatter and Alice herself, surrounding Chaykin at his workbench as he assembles the already-legendary White Rabbit timepiece.These aren’t merely characters from the classic children’s novel, however. The figures in A Mad Horological Party have appeared previously in Chaykin’s paintings as studies created in preparation for the White Rabbit project. And while the artist is no stranger to self-portraiture (in addition to paintings, his acclaimed Joker Selfie Wristmon watch features a sapphire magnifier over one of the eye-shaped dials, evoking a watchmaker’s loupe), this work marks new territory for Chaykin. A Mad Horological Party situates the artist within the world of his own devising, where the figures that populate Chaykin’s artworks aren’t mere literary footnotes, or even products of the artist’s imagination, but witnesses to the act of creation itself.Courtesy of Konstantin ChaykinIt is a significant entry into the unfolding of Chaykin’s automythology. White Rabbit and A Mad Horological Party are inextricable from one another; this dual offering further intertwines Chaykin’s parallel disciplines of watchmaking and painting, bringing them into explicit dialogue with one another, while offering a fantastical narrative of the creation of a landmark timepiece, and by extension, the artist’s creative arc.A Mad Horological Party and White Rabbit will appear at Dubai Watch Week, November 19-23. The painting will then go to auction alongside White Rabbit — the sole edition of its kind available for public sale — as Lot 5 and Lot 6, respectively, at Ineichen Auctioneers in Zurich on December 13, 2025.learn more