Tomasz Domański [Poland]
“Phantom Bridge” | installation
venue: Na Stępce Canal, installation watched from the side of Ołowianka Str.
“Phantom Bridge” project is an illusive bridge over the river. Bright color of 4 steel “pylons” expresses the ethereal character of the object.
The concept’s underlying fascination with something which does not exist in terms of function but does exist as challenge to cross… The Phantom bridge is not an engineered structure but it is being transformed into a temporary work in which subtle steel cable installation become a new phantom.
The visible bridge is a false construction pretending to be real. In fact the similarity is quite misleading as during the night all other bridges attract with illumination and the difference can be hardly seen. Investigating the interplay between light and space and its effect on human perception. The work’s status as either permanent or ephemeral is relative. The viewers are like the people locked in a cave in Plato’s famous myth, looking at a wall on which they see nothing but unreal objects, images, the shadows of the real things existing outside the cave. Only by overcoming the familiar sensible world, could they begin an ascent out of the cave into reality: the process culminates in the direct vision of the sun, which reduce the splendour of glamorous light drawing the fake bridge during the night – disappearing during the day. The viewers’ awareness contributes to the mystification of a kind: the viewers thus accept and interpret the object’s new function proposed by the artist. The people do not feel threatened; they are, however, being cajoled into the game of art which is not safe at all. The interplay between the visible and invisible undermines the perception of reality by emphasising its volatile nature: this is something the public usually does not like at all for a number of reasons, for example for the fear of being mocked or appearing ignorant. We rather got used to the reality of light shows and fire works, the shiny objects and their ephemeral time span of existence, make us excited for a while. On the contrary fake construction may be taken for real misleading our senses, but it has nothing to do with human efforts to make things concrete, reliable, long lasting.
Phantom bridge shows the glamour of vanity and emptiness which is under the glitter on the other hand it pretends to be a monumental work, because it has been done with dash, lavish work engaging the audience completely and the impression is lasting. In fact, the monumental character of an object does not depend on the kind of matter of which it is built. If the light is the material, and it creates only a short existence of the composition, the work cannot be monumental? For the answer I would like to “quote” image of Henryk Stazewski – Polish artist’s light installations titled “ Vertical composition unbounded” showed during the Art Symposium Wroclaw 1970 in Poland.
Tomasz Domanski, born in 1962 in Giżycko, he was at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw from 1988-1993, and in 2003 he got his PhD. In 1995, he spent a year on a scholarship at the University in Varanasi (Banaras Hindu University) in India. In 2000-2004 he was a member of the Program Council of Polish Sculpture in Oronsk. He is a four- time scholar of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and several other foundations, including the Pollock-Krasner in New York, Joseph Beuys in Basel, Elizabeth Montag in Bonn. In 1997 he represented Poland at the IX Triennial of Contemporary Art in New Delhi. He was also nominated for Polityka`s “Passport”. The author participated in 50 solo exhibitions and over 100 collective exhibitions.
