Roma soyerov
'd2-d4'
Overview
Chess is built on opposition: black against white, one player against another. d2-d4 takes that away. Every piece is glazed in the same color, so there is no black and no white, no other side. Whoever sits down at the board is playing against themselves.
The pieces are formed by hand. The shared glaze makes them read as one set; the irregular shapes keep the trace of the hands that made them. No two are quite alike.
The question the work asks is simple, and it was printed on its first label: what happens if you try to play chess with pieces of one color? The label's answer was just as simple. Try it.
Chess is built on opposition: black against white, one player against another. d2-d4 takes that away. Every piece is glazed in the same color, so there is no black and no white, no other side. Whoever sits down at the board is playing against themselves.
The pieces are formed by hand. The shared glaze makes them read as one set; the irregular shapes keep the trace of the hands that made them. No two are quite alike.
The question the work asks is simple, and it was printed on its first label: what happens if you try to play chess with pieces of one color? The label's answer was just as simple. Try it.
The opening move
At PROPAGANDA in Tashkent in 2025, the set stood on a table in its starting position with one move already made: d2-d4. A label invited visitors to try playing. At the opening, Soyerov played a game on it against Murtas Kazhgaleyev, a Kazakhstani grandmaster based in Tashkent and one of the most respected chess players in Uzbekistan. He admitted to Gazeta.uz (in Russian) afterwards that he didn't find his bearings on the board right away, and that only a professional's memory saved his reputation as a master. The first move has been played for you; the next one is yours, and so is every move after it, on both sides.
The pieces are covered in a thick, flowing blue glaze, the kind associated with the ceramics of Bukhara and Rishtan and one of the oldest visual languages in Central Asia. The work lifts that language out of collective memory and puts it to a private use: a game where the only person across the board is you.
Without two colors, the usual reading of the board falls apart. You can still tell a pawn from a knight by its shape, but not whose pawn it is. Every capture is a capture of your own piece. Every threat is a threat to yourself.
At PROPAGANDA in Tashkent in 2025, the set stood on a table in its starting position with one move already made: d2-d4. A label invited visitors to try playing. At the opening, Soyerov played a game on it against Murtas Kazhgaleyev, a Kazakhstani grandmaster based in Tashkent and one of the most respected chess players in Uzbekistan. He admitted to Gazeta.uz (in Russian) afterwards that he didn't find his bearings on the board right away, and that only a professional's memory saved his reputation as a master. The first move has been played for you; the next one is yours, and so is every move after it, on both sides.
The pieces are covered in a thick, flowing blue glaze, the kind associated with the ceramics of Bukhara and Rishtan and one of the oldest visual languages in Central Asia. The work lifts that language out of collective memory and puts it to a private use: a game where the only person across the board is you.
Without two colors, the usual reading of the board falls apart. You can still tell a pawn from a knight by its shape, but not whose pawn it is. Every capture is a capture of your own piece. Every threat is a threat to yourself.
The Merano position
At WE SPEAK, an artist-led group exhibition at Art Station Gallery in Samarkand in 2025, the set was laid out in one specific position: the board after White's 24th move in the first game of the 1981 World Chess Championship in Merano, Italy. The opening is a Queen's Gambit Declined. Twenty-six pieces are left on the board, thirteen for each side.
The match was played between Anatoly Karpov, the world champion, representing the USSR, and Viktor Korchnoi, the challenger, representing Switzerland. Korchnoi was born in Leningrad and came up through the same Soviet chess school as Karpov; he left the Soviet Union in 1976 and played the match under a different flag. Two players from the same country, on opposite sides of the board.
On a board where every piece is the same color, that distinction is the one thing the position can't show. The work leaves the viewer to notice it.
At WE SPEAK, an artist-led group exhibition at Art Station Gallery in Samarkand in 2025, the set was laid out in one specific position: the board after White's 24th move in the first game of the 1981 World Chess Championship in Merano, Italy. The opening is a Queen's Gambit Declined. Twenty-six pieces are left on the board, thirteen for each side.
The match was played between Anatoly Karpov, the world champion, representing the USSR, and Viktor Korchnoi, the challenger, representing Switzerland. Korchnoi was born in Leningrad and came up through the same Soviet chess school as Karpov; he left the Soviet Union in 1976 and played the match under a different flag. Two players from the same country, on opposite sides of the board.
On a board where every piece is the same color, that distinction is the one thing the position can't show. The work leaves the viewer to notice it.
In development: the monumental piece
Soyerov is developing a monumental version of the work: a single chess piece at architectural scale, in the same thick blue glaze, shaped as if it were melting in the heat. It is planned at 7.5 metres high, as a public art object outside the centre of Tashkent: a destination people travel to see, rather than something passed on the way to somewhere else. The project is looking for partners.
Soyerov is developing a monumental version of the work: a single chess piece at architectural scale, in the same thick blue glaze, shaped as if it were melting in the heat. It is planned at 7.5 metres high, as a public art object outside the centre of Tashkent: a destination people travel to see, rather than something passed on the way to somewhere else. The project is looking for partners.
Hit and Run
In Hit and Run d2-d4 is a standalone work. It is also one half of Hit and Run, a composition in which it sits on a pedestal directly below the painting Expectation / Reality, in the same opening setup.
The two works make the same move from different sides. The painting shows two figures locked like wrestlers, who turn out to be one person in two states. The board has two sides that turn out to be the same color. Both remove the real opponent, and both leave the viewer facing a struggle that is, in the end, with themselves.
In Hit and Run d2-d4 is a standalone work. It is also one half of Hit and Run, a composition in which it sits on a pedestal directly below the painting Expectation / Reality, in the same opening setup.
The two works make the same move from different sides. The painting shows two figures locked like wrestlers, who turn out to be one person in two states. The board has two sides that turn out to be the same color. Both remove the real opponent, and both leave the viewer facing a struggle that is, in the end, with themselves.
Readings
In an application to Studio 66's open call in Barcelona, "I will bore myself to either death or self illumination", chess stood in for repetition itself: the same moves and strategies, played for years, until you either burn out from the monotony or reach some understanding through it.
With no opponent, the weight of the title falls on "myself". If every piece is the same color, why play at all? People play anyway.
Submitted to Barcelona Contemporary 9 as part of Hit and Run, it became the ground under an internal conflict: Central Asian ceramics moved out of their place in collective memory and into a personal crisis, so that cultural identity becomes the material for thinking about psychological identity.
In the portfolio for Palazzo Monti, the whole piece was reduced to two lines: one color, no opponent. You play only against yourself.
In an application to Studio 66's open call in Barcelona, "I will bore myself to either death or self illumination", chess stood in for repetition itself: the same moves and strategies, played for years, until you either burn out from the monotony or reach some understanding through it.
With no opponent, the weight of the title falls on "myself". If every piece is the same color, why play at all? People play anyway.
Submitted to Barcelona Contemporary 9 as part of Hit and Run, it became the ground under an internal conflict: Central Asian ceramics moved out of their place in collective memory and into a personal crisis, so that cultural identity becomes the material for thinking about psychological identity.
In the portfolio for Palazzo Monti, the whole piece was reduced to two lines: one color, no opponent. You play only against yourself.
FAQ
- Can you actually play on it?Yes. In its opening setup, the first move, d2-d4, is already made and visitors continue from there, on both sides. At PROPAGANDA, Soyerov opened the show by playing a game on it against grandmaster Murtas Kazhgaleyev, who admitted afterwards that the one-color board threw him at first. At WE SPEAK in Samarkand the pieces stood in a fixed historical position instead, and the board was only for looking.
- How do you tell the sides apart?You don't. That's the point. The pieces differ by shape, not by color, so every piece on the board belongs to the same player.
- So who wins?Whoever is playing. On a board where both sides are the same color, every win is also a loss, and every capture takes one of your own pieces.
- Why blue?The glaze refers to the thick, flowing blue of Central Asian ceramics, the kind associated with Bukhara and Rishtan. The same blue turns up in Soft Skill, where the elephant takes its color from this set: in Russian, the bishop is called slon, the elephant.
- Is it a sculpture or a game?Both, depending on how it's shown. In its opening setup it's a game you can join. In the Merano position it's a piece of history you can only look at.
- Can I see the monumental version?Not yet. A 7.5-metre version in the same blue glaze is in development as a public art object outside the centre of Tashkent. The project is looking for partners: get in touch through the contacts on this page.
- Is it for sale?Yes. The pieces are sold individually or as a full set, on request. Each one is formed by hand, so no two are exactly alike: a single piece is still one of a kind.