The sculpture was made of metal, plexiglass and fitted with an electronic-lighting system. Its author is Marta Stefaniak, who wanted to combine technology and nature in this way. This can be seen at night, when the installation, illuminated from within, highlights the irregular metal shell.
The work was presented in Orońsko’s park and was created as part of the 4th edition of the International Symposium on Contemporary Sculpture 2023. The realisation of the sculpture ‘Destruction and Repair’ began in the aforementioned 2023 and ended on 31 August 2024. Its execution was time-consuming as the sculpture consists of several thousand elements.
The idea behind the resulting work was to show in the sculpture the phenomenon of intelligent nature’s constant return to express new combinations of patterns – stable connections – with new structures. The artist used the motif of a destroyed geometric form, based on circles with technological features, which is, after all, part of this world. The process of transformation in nature of the ‘old’ into the ‘new’ is a kind of natural cycle.
Nature will accept everything, assimilate everything, and reintegrate what we have ‘taken’ from her for a while. The sculptural work employs the same – in principle – repetitive structures noticeable both in the technological creation based on broken circles and in the biological tumour made of detached circles transformed into stretched, open curves similar to elliptical arcs. While working on the concept and then its realisation, questions arose: to what extent are we humans aware of the level of complexity of the structures around us, whose shape and stability are unpredictably influenced by scientific experiments? What are the consequences of surrounding ourselves with more and more processing, which is in ever-increasing contact with our biological, slowly evolving body? – asks the author of the sculpture.
Marta Stefaniak also touches on energy and spiritual themes. Electricity has been transformed into light. The work consists of a solid core of light, which is encased in a structural form of steel. In several zones it has been more strongly diluted, where the compact structure takes the form of decay. The technical, geometrised tissue is transformed into a more obtuse – biological tissue.
Light exists in each of the two types of structural forms. It IS cyclically present, moving, pulsating. Only dusk reveals its sacral, luminous, timeless dimension, referring in this symbolic way to unchanging spiritual truths in the changeable world of matter, to the essence of things, in which this essence manifests itself in various forms, adds Marta Stefaniak.
The artist admits that she managed to make the sculpture thanks to the help of people close to her. As she recalls, there were days when the sculpture consumed her for up to 16 hours of work a day. The determination and commitment of those who support her gave the sculpture a further meaning. The installation symbolises not only the complexity of nature, but has accumulated the life energy of the people who contributed to its creation.
source: Marta Stefaniak
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