|

|
Journalist Herbert
Wright comments in April's issue of Blueprint
april 2007
The artist Simon Tyszko is sleeping with a wing of a
Douglas C-47 Dakota cargo aircraft.
No, it's not in his bed, but it has been
in his head, and now it slices through his bedroom at eye-level, disappearing
seamlessly into a shelf of books.
In his fifth-floor flat, an early post-war brick council slab in Fulham,
West London, the wing continues into the next room, fatly spanning a
spacious sitting room. All is still - the wing speed is zero.
It is an installation called Phlight,
built with a little help from the Arts Council.
Tyszko
has a history of startling works. In 2002, he created a stencil kit
to form the words Absolut Hypocrisy from 14g of pure cocaine. In
the same year he received global attention with Suicide Bomber Barbie,
a doll with a take on the glamorization of suicide bombers for Hamas,
al-Qaeda and the like.Phlight's
original inspiration came from the shock of 9/11. Tyszko considers
the moment just before the second impact, when the plane seemed frozen,
as 'the apex of modernism' politics, technology, commerce and religion
all about to collide. 'The weight of the metaphor literally brought
the building down,' he says. Phlight, too, is a frozen moment, but
has evolved from 9/11 to a more elusive spectacle.
This is art colliding with architecture, and the domestic setting makes
it a personal experience. Tyszko's Polish father flew with the wartime
RAF, and Tyszko used to tell the kids on the common-access balconies
that he was building an escape machine, like the glider in Colditz.
The
wing is faithful to original Douglas blueprints (below), although aluminium.
Its construction in a workshop in Kew by ETS Design (which recently
engineered a revolving caravan for a Richard Wilson work) has been
archived by David Ellis for a future documentary, and video clips are
on the Phlight website. The alignment of the sections between the bedroom
and lounge is millimetre-perfect. There are no markings, just rivets
and edges. Much is left to the imagination.
The choice of a Dakota is significant. From the Forties, California churned
out thousands to transport troops and cargo to war, and later give the
Berlin Airlift its take-off. Over the jungles of Papua, it enabled the
Allies to keep ahead of the nimble Japanese Army. There, Papuan tribes
who had never seen an aeroplane before thought it was a god - perhaps
the first case where technology has been deified.
The Dakota is a heroic machine, reflecting the optimism of modernism
in which technology promised to deliver Utopia. It even became divine.
Now, its wing is a modernist icon slicing through a personal space -
in this case, a flat built with the modernist idealism of social housing.
Whether Phlight is a postmodernist statement on modernism, a heroic romance
in metal or just a flight of fancy, the ideas it invokes are numerous.
Phlight
will also be the venue for a series of events with the likes of Will
Self, lain Sinclair and others. Tyszko will literally be artist-in-residence
for at least a year, and from this month will issue boarding passes
for public viewing (see www.phlight.org). Even more than the Sixties'
council flat in Manchester that hosts the Apartment Gallery, the venue
is part of the statement. A collector is already interested, but he
would have to buy the entire flat, Whatever happens, this Dakota wing
remains in the fabric of Fulham, and of time. |


|
|