ROEL/Robot ROEL

Material/Technology: Stainless steel, forging, welding

Dimensions: width: 3.6 m, length: 3.6 m, height: 2.6 m, weight: 800 kg

Object:

Elvin Flamingo’s huge steel sculpture was created as a result of the ROEL drawings he created earlier in his I Am Sure of What I See series. The name is a combination of the syllables RO from “robot” and EL from the creator’s pseudonym. In 2019, thanks to interest from the Euro Styl company, the first works on the sculpture began. In the first stage, a 3D model was created by Piotr Gostowski, after which specialists from Piotr Chudoba’s construction studio got to work. The complex spatial form posed a huge challenge to the constructors, who compared the degree of difficulty to preparing the structure of an advanced bridge. The sculpture was created by a team of blacksmiths from Arkadiusz Kania’s workshop. The process took almost a year. The artist himself supervised the work at every stage and also built the steel elements. The blacksmiths did the steel work by hand. They heated up the material, struck it, then welded and polished it. The whole process was very labour-intensive and required high technical and manual skills.

The sculpture has a very complex form made of interconnected steel elements. The monumental nature of the sculpture is underlined by the high-quality material. The polished steel phenomenally reflects the light. The work resembles a slightly bent robot resting on several stems and is an unusual element of the inner courtyard of the design on the residential complex in the former Post Office area in Gdańsk-Wrzeszcz

Place:

The ROEL sculpture is located in the inner patio of the Dawna Poczta residential development. The developer, Euro Styl, revitalised a former post office building located in Gdańsk-Wrzeszcz.

Information about the author:

Jarosław Czarnecki a. k.a. Elvin Flamingo (b. 1967) is a visual artist and professor at the Department of Sculpture and Intermedia at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. He served as associate dean for intermedia from 2016–2019. He creates intermedia projects at the intersection of art, biology and technology (bioart, art+science). The Symbioticity of Creation project was defended as a PhD in 2014. The project refers to destructing and creating again and to the position of the creator in the context of living megalopolises created by living organisms. Symbioticity of Creation was nominated for the Prime Minister’s Award.

Condition of the object: very good

Owner/guardian: Euro Styl S.A.

Author of the entry: Kinga Jarocka