Untitled

Monika Sosnowska’s objects should be situated within a hybrid field of reciprocal influences between architecture and sculpture. Her starting point is the broadly understood Modernism; the achievements of Constructivism, Socialist Realism and the art of the 1960s and 1970s lie within the scope of her interest. Sosnowska looks for inspiration not only to edifices (e.g. the Lake Shore Drive Apartments in Chicago, designed by Mies van der Rohe); she also makes use of their constituent parts, such as stairs, handrails, doorknobs, grilles, façades, and the small-scale architectural structures, such as benches, kiosks or stalls. She subjects them to deformations, questioning their functionality, durability, construction and the fundamentals of aesthetics (such as the geometric principle of the straight angle) and thus also questioning the architectural codes of Modernism.

The work Untitled belongs to the Stalls series. The place in which their originals used to function – the no longer extant Jarmark Europa (Europe Fair) once located within the 10th-Anniversary Stadium in Warsaw – is essential to these works. The stadium constituted a sui generis synthesis of the post-war history of Poland: from the propagandistic structure from the period of the People’s Republic of Poland, whose embankment was constructed from rubble taken from the ruins of the city destroyed during the 2^nd World War, to the vast marketplace that used to be the city’s beating heart in the early years of the political transformation. Sosnowska is less fascinated with the monumental, brilliant architecture of the stadium than with the increasingly dilapidated infrastructure of fair: booths known as “the jaws”, kiosks and stalls abandoned by small-scale traders from Asia and the countries of the former Soviet bloc. The crumpled structures represent an entirely new quality; their original function is difficult to ascertain. It is perhaps justified to see them as a metaphor of the subsequent metamorphosis of the 10th-Anniversary Stadium area, where the new National Stadium has been standing since 2012.

The material and its qualities constitute an essential feature of Sosnowska’s explorations. The workshop aspect of her pieces is worth noting. As the first stage in developing her objects a paper model is made, which is subsequently immersed in water and then dried. The next step is to repeat the model in steel, which is then formed, and deformed. The process is largely consulted with engineers, workers and specialists in construction materials, who are often compelled to seek new technical solutions.

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translated from Polish by Klaudyna Michałowicz