GREENVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA – Waterfall of Light, a new sculpture by artist Dimitar Lukanov was unveiled on May 23 at the Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport (GSP) as part of the $125 million WINGSPAN renovation of the airport. Lukanov’s design was the winning proposal of a nation-wide competition organized by the airport. Waterfall of Light is the largest and last of eight other art and design features at GSP that are part of Art Program Phase One. WINGSPAN Grand Opening Celebration for the completed renovation took place from 6-8 pm.
Installed at one of GSP airport’s most prominent locations – North Pyramid Fountain – the sculpture will “live” as a visual crossroad of GSP’s renovated air Terminal; a welcoming beacon and a focal perspective point as if all trajectories of travel converge into one. The constant yet never-the-same reflection of the water creates the illusion of Waterfall of Light being always in motion.
Lukanov created the 19 ft (6m) (1,000 lb.) sculpture – made of 250 ft of bent steel tubing with an upward sequence of 300 light-filled filigree steel elements – based on only two drawings. No computer was used. He built the sculpture in his Schoharie County, upstate New York studio as a veritable drawing in space with work development, all scaled by eye.
As a symbol of growth, renewal and continuum, the sculpture’s ascendant cascades of light culminate in a sun, oriented to both airport’s interior and GSP’s unique, nature-saturated exterior grounds. Much like people in an airport, the beams of light – veritable comets, visualized by hundreds of sculpture’s elements, converge into a single apex, only to disperse ad infinitum at its next level. Like the flow of water, Waterfall of Light is a never-ending gesture of movement, and life.
Said Dimitar Lukanov: “As airports increasingly become places of anticipated enhanced aesthetic experiences – veritable condensed cities on the go – what struck me is how truly alive Waterfall of Light became in a bona fide dialogue with people and travelers from all strata of life and age. This warm interaction nourished me like nothing else.”
Millions of people around the world are familiar with Dimitar Lukanov’s public art as his 2014 major three-piece (Outside Time, Voice of Tomorrow, History of Time) sculpture commission for JFK International Airport in New York continues to garner praise.
ABOUT DIMITAR LUKANOV | Born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria in 1969, Dimitar Lukanov lives in Brooklyn and works in his studio in Schoharie County, New York. An American citizen since 2003, Lukanov studied art on full scholarship in Paris and New York receiving his MFA from Columbia University in 1997. He is the recipient of numerous grants including: Pollack Krasner, Michel and Helene David-Weill grant, Paris and New York, Clews Center for the Arts fellowship, France, Soros Open Society, Skowhegan Fellowship, ArtCultureStudio, Geneva, Switzerland, Medal for Sculpture, First International Sculpture Symposium, Mexico and Invited Artist International Art Fair, Shanghai and Moscow, ExpressArte, Mexico. He is member of the Chilean Association of Painters and Sculptors. www.dimitarlukanov.com
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