Lion

Technique: metal sculpture, steel

Dimensions: 14 m (total height), 5 m (width)

Object: This large sculpture of a lion’s head is installed on the north-west corner of Iconic, one of the buildings on the Forum Gdańsk square, where all the most important viewing axes and functional directions intersect. The steel Lion was meant to be visible from all sides, starting from Droga Królewska, through Nowy Targ Sienny up to 3 Maja Street, then along the Radunia Channel, from Targ Rakowy, from the inside of the Wasserkunst building and from the lower level of Nowy Targ Sienny. The sculpture’s colours were designed to harmonise with the building’s façade. The Lion is made primarily of steel sheets. The shape was obtained using welded polygonal segments. The sculpture was allowed to naturally rust and was then preserved, together with the rust coat, in the artist’s own technology. The structure was divided into twenty-eight parts, which were only assembled as a whole on the building. The composition is open, with a geometricized figural form.

Place: The sculpture was placed on a building called the Iconic, which Marek Nakonieczny, its architect, regards as the most important element of the entire Forum Gdańsk complex. In his opinion, the Iconic building’s structure “compositionally arranges the system of shapes, roofs and plinth walls in the Forum Gdańsk façade from the side of Okopowa Street. The cuboid cinema building in the southern end and the cuboid Iconic building on the northern end are the two dominant features of the façade. Between them, it is ‘fragmented’ into smaller shapes, roofs and differently sloping plinths”. According to Nakonieczny, the Iconic building was supposed to act as a compositional extension to the axis of Droga Królewska and the Radunia Channel. When designing the building’s façade, Nakonieczny specified the general appearance of the sculpture, its exact location and dimensions, as well as the materials (rusted steel). The Lion is located on an exposed corner of the building and integrated with the entire architectural structure. The detailed implementation of the idea was entrusted to Tomasz Górnicki, under the artistic supervision of Your Art Maison Gallery from Warsaw.

Information about the author: Tomasz Górnicki (born in 1986), sculptor, graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw under Prof. Janusz Antoni Pastwa. Winner of the Award of the Minister of Culture and Art. His work has been shown at many exhibitions in Poland and abroad. His sculptures include Moth; A Dream of Warsaw; Mother, Where Are Your Children, Now You Are Going Alone, and many others. Górnicki collaborates with street art artists (Monstfur, Sepe, Chazme and Seikon) and is the co-founder of the Iron Oxide collective. He creates his sculptures in his own artistic foundry. He also works with photography, installations and street art.

Condition of the object –

Owner/guardian: Forum Gdańsk

Author of the entry: Kora Kowalska