Binding: hardback, Format: 21x27,5 cm, Pages: 476, 643 photographs and illustrations, 2020, book in Polish and English
The album entitled Wieżogród / TowerTopia documents a garden establishment unique on an international scale. The dynamic structure of the topiary is an architectural “whim” - a curiosity collection of steel towers and sculptures set in the natural buffer zone of the Strzelińskie-Niemcze hills. It is a fascinating conglomerate of the mastery of large-scale sculpture, process art and harmony by the sculptor Tomasz Domański. The publication, with the accuracy of an eager documentalist, brings closer the history of the creation of the enclave in which sculptural and horticultural forms exist on equal terms. The artistic photographs are accompanied by texts by Polish specialists in the fields of history, theory and criticism of art, aesthetics, cultural studies and philosophy. The author’s gardens are special places, where the “beauty of the world” is restored, but also built and inhabited. The gardens as meta-spaces borrow the aesthetics of the landscape of the area in which they are located and in return radiate their own energy.
Note about the author
Tomasz Domański, author of the photographs and artist of the sculpture garden. In 2003 he obtained a doctoral degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw. In the years 2000-2004 he was a member of the Programme Council of the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko. In 2012 1st prize in a competition for an artistic and architectural concept for a public space near Boxbourg, Germany. In 2015 1st prize in a competition for sculpture in public space within the framework of cooperation between the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław and the city of Goerlitz under the patronage of the European Capital of Culture Wrocław 2016. He was a four-time scholarship holder of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and many foundations, among others: Pollock-Krasner from New York, Joseph Beuys from Basel, Elizabeth Montag from Bonn. In 1997 he represented Poland at the 9th Triennial of Contemporary Art in New Delhi. He was also nominated for “Paszport” of Polityka magazine. The artist has taken part in over 50 individual exhibitions and artistic actions and in over 100 group shows. He has given numerous lectures on art at, among others, KulturKontakt Vienna, Speed Museum Louisville, US. In 2014 he prepared the architectural object Square Dome for the opening of the European Capital of Culture Umea.
Major solo exhibitions:
1999 Akropolis - exhibition at the National Museum in Wrocław, an installation referring in form to an ancient temple, changing over the centuries into an industrial Technochram of the 21st century;
2003 Ephemeral Sculpture - Relative Monument - Museum of Architecture, Wrocław;
2008 Recycling Program - Awangarda BWA, Wrocław; a series of objects, paintings, collages and films, sparingly sculptural realisations in elementary materials;
2011 Middle Age - Wro Art New Media Centre, Wrocław; multimedia exhibition http://www.wrocenter.pl/tomasz-domanski-wiek-sredni/;
2014 Square Dome - European Capital of Culture - Umea 2014, Sweden. In front of the town hall in the city of Umea, another object from the Monuments of Time series made of ice and steel was created;
2016 Jacob’s Dream - European Capital of Culture; installation in public space, Wrocław;
Since 2016 four reliefs from 1997 included in the permanent exhibition: Collection of Polish Art of the Second Half of the 20th Century and the 21st Century, National Museum, Four Domes Pavilion, Wrocław;
2019 Monuments of Time / Retrospective, Centre for Science and Art - Museum of Industry and Technology - Old Mine in Wałbrzych;
2020 Monuments of Time / Retrospective, Centre for Polish Sculpture - Museum of Contemporary Sculpture in Orońsko;
2021 Cut - Wro Art Centre for New Media, Wrocław; performance.
