Jacek Wankowski
18 May 2009
Tsunami
Galvanised mild steel and oxidised corten steel £12,000
The artist tells us that the galvanised elements represent the calm sea while the angled weathered corten steel represents the reefs, sea bottom and land at the edge of the sea.
Skerret
Galvanised mild steel and oxidised corten steel £3,000
"My practice is inpsired by my experiences as a marine biologist and builds on the abstract Modernist traditions in international sculpture of the past 80 years."
About Jacek Wankowski
My practice is inspired by my experiences as a Marine Biologist and builds on the abstract Modernist traditions in international sculpture of the past 80 years - Moore, Lewitt, Pepper, Serra, Goldsworthy, Caro, Kapoor, Twombly, Gehry, Hadid . . . . . .
A major theme running through my work is inspired by industrial artifacts, by mythical and archaeological imagery (the Chimaera, ancient megalithic structures, the Ouroboros) and by oceanic and other aquatic subjects - for example the marine animals (molluscs, sea hares, copepods, rotifers, barnacles, nereid worms) which generally live an unremarkable, transitory, but ecologically essential existence on the bottom of the sea. However, as in all abstractions, the initial inspiration then develops its own life. The result may successfully capture the essence and attributes of the source, or it may develop in a completely unexpected direction.
My work also explores the abstraction of the internal and external surfaces of living things - in particular the tension generated when these surfaces interface and interact with (often violent) external environmental forces. External form is also dictated by complex internal relationships and structures and is held together and shaped by these - a 'skin and bones' where both elements are visibly part of the finished work.
Animals and plants are by their nature soft, flexible and pliable. But steel is hard and unyielding - an industrial and sculpturally recalcitrant material. My steel is cut, shaped, welded and bolted; electroplated, hot-dip galvanized, heat-treated, oxidised, patinated. It keeps to the spirit of an industrial object even while describing a biomorphic form. Additional treatments of the plated surfaces can result in their developing quite complex patinas. My intention is to keep the industrial nature of the work clear and unambiguous - still recognisable as steel, the surface treatments deliberately retaining the 'grain' and other marks of the making process.
Constructed through the additive joining processes of welding and bolting, components are pre-formed and joined symbiotically rather than fused into a mass. Thus, they relate to each other as surfaces, as individual entities and as parts of the whole. The interplay of the spaces and hollows between the components is as important as the individual parts themselves - tension results from the desire to integrate these spaces and to see how they interact with each other, the physical elements and the piece as a whole. Although often grounded in biological forms, these are unambiguously hard-edged 'industrial' objects in their surfaces, construction and mass.
My work is intended to interact directly and unambiguously with its immediate visual, physical and human environment. Many of my pieces are intended to be installed in a natural or soft non-industrial environment - on grass or old flagstones, amongst trees or with a background of weathered brickwork; where surface patinas will gradually develop with age. Each work is designed and intended to interact with, and age uniquely within, its environment.
