Artist Statement


Floating World

Residing in a precarious water borne environment, Stephen Talasnik’s “Floating World," a monolithic site specific sculpture located within the Monet Pool at Denver Botanic Gardens, evokes the spirit of the surrealist landscape and skeletal underwater Jules Verne Metropolis.  It is an installation that explores contrasting states: that which is visible on the water surface with a mysterious civilization living within the depths of the blackened reflecting pool.


 The title, referencing Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, “An Artist of the Floating World” examines the convergence of aquatic botany with intuitively engineered architecture to evoke an otherworldly landscape that synthesizes the contemplative serenity of a Buddhist rock garden with the chaotic world of the unknown. Talasnik’s installation employs water as a visual metaphor to inspire both a greater understanding of existence and truth with the unlimited capacity of the wandering mind to explore unfettered imagination.


Presented in clusters or  “species," viewers are invited to explore geometrically developed structures that reference micro-organisms and growth patterns. The groups of bamboo objects depict the patterning of urban sprawl as well as the intimacy of botany’s visual tactility.

"Floating World," installed upon a ¼ acre pool from May 5 to November 4, 2012, is part of a larger exhibition at Denver Botanic Gardens devoted to a celebration of bamboo.

http://stephentalasnik.com/