Differential Diagnosis: The Complexity from ArtyA Will Blow Your Mind

Yvan Arpa is the mastermind behind ArtyA and one of 2026’s most audacious releases to date, the Complexity. I have never met Arpa personally, but Watchonista’s Mike Espindle has, and he has an excellent anecdote about the watchmaker’s creative process:

“One of the first times I met Yvan Arpa,” says Espindle, “he shared a video of him in his workshop/lab using open bolts of high-voltage electricity to artfully mar watch dials. My comment to him: ‘Yvan, I know you must sleep well at night because your days kind of look like nightmares to me.’

In addition to home-made lighting-scored dials, I’ve seen small caliber bullet rounds, cured toad skin leather, and other unexpected, but scary, things find their way onto ArtyA watches. This new Complexity timepiece, however, is decidedly more dream than nightmare.”

Here’s what we mean when we say the Complexity, released today, has incepted our hearts and subconsciousness.

This year, ArtyA is unveiling two versions of its latest creation, the Complexity. Both editions contain two inclined tourbillons. Both are surrounded by a full sapphire crystal case.

While the inner workings of the Complexity can draw a direct line back to Abraham Breguet’s original tourbillon, ArtyA is calling this creation “an extreme and spectacular mechanical sculpture, conceived to be admired from every angle while magnifying the chronometry and absolute precision that define the very essence of this watch.”
 

Historically, the cônillon traces its origins to the work of Andrew Holden Potter, circa 1860. More recently, the inclined tourbillon of the Complexity can also trace its lineage to the modern innovations of Éric Coudray, who has created wild and innovative mechanisms for the likes of MB&F, HYT, and Purnell. And to whom we owe the development of the gyrotourbillon.

It is indeed complex – I’m not sure I entirely understand how the math is mathing here, so I’ll paraphrase liberally from the press materials here. With an inclined tourbillon, or cônillon, the balance wheel’s axis does not trace a cylindrical path as in the Breguet tradition, but rather takes a conical trajectory, compensating for the effects of gravity according to a radically different geometry.
 

With the Complexity. ArtyA is standing on the shoulders of giants, but it is also creating its own tradition.

For the first time in horological history, two inclined tourbillons are positioned at 12 o’clock and 6 o’clock within the movement, according to a spatial architecture of rare complexity in which none of the axes of the balance, the cage, and the pallet fork are parallel to one another, ensuring absolute precision across all positions.
 

This configuration, with its differential coupling, creates a kinematic average of rate errors, thus smoothing out gravity-induced deviations across positions and enabling chronometric optimization at 360 degrees.

In watchmaking, certain feats transcend mere complication.

The Complexity calibre is developed in collaboration with Purtec Sàrl, a specialist in innovative horological complications. Its 287 components and 44 jewels are the fruit of thousands of hours of engineering dedicated to resolving the challenges posed by the double inclined tourbillons at 12 and 6 o’clock: dynamic balance, energy transmission via the differential, and the preservation of precision within an architecture without precedent.
 

And while the mechanism is a work of art in its own right, every little detail has been carefully considered and executed in accordance with the traditions of contemporary haute horlogerie. And speaking of lineage, the organic curves of the case, movement, and dial are the work of Jérémie Arpa, son of the founder and the Maison's designer.

The mainplate utilizes an organic silhouette, with two apertures at 12 and 6 o’clock that showcase the two inclined tourbillons beneath their respective sapphire domes. As each cônillon completes its 30-second rotation, its offbeat rotation creates a hypnotic effect.

The Complexity is also offered in two dial types (griffe engraved and matte) two case materials pigeon’s blood red and clear sapphire) with dial color variants (anthracite and silver). All versions come with an integrated rubber strap coordinated with the case color.
 

Limited to nine copies, each piece is individually numbered. It is available by order and is priced at CHF 190,000 in clear sapphire and CHF 220,000 in ruby. For more information, check out the ArtyA website.