MONIKA SOSNOWSKA

The title of the exhibition speaks to Sosnowska’s enduring interest in both materiality and ruination. This new suite of sculptures continues her exploration of abandoned urban spaces, specifically their capacity to reveal uniquely beautiful and melancholic configurations when in a state of decay. Sosnowska imbues her works with the strange mix of utopian aspiration and spectral, broken elegance found in these places across the globe. For example, one work takes inspiration from shattered windows in a disused factory in Chemnitz, Germany.

Collectively, the works show a shift towards more poetic and figurative concerns rather than direct references to the built environment and Modernist construction. Sosnowska anthropomorphises her modest materials, creating evocative humanoid and plant-like forms: a section of cut pipe resembles mushrooms or leaves composed from torn paper; a warped metal shape appears as a fragment of a discarded machine; twisted rebar and concrete passages recall crumpled fragments of antique sculpture.

Sosnowska produces detailed maquettes in her studio before embarking on the fabrication of the final pieces. These miniatures are composed from paper, cardboard, modelling clay and wire, and were recently the subject of a survey exhibition at the Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern. In each one, she is seeking a kind of rightness or identity in form. The installation was assembled in a similarly intuitive manner – producing a sense of tension which is cut through by a welded section of rebar snaking through the space. While the sculptures nod to the aesthetic history of Minimalism, she rejects the purity of this genre. Sosnowska draws back all the context and historical contingencies which this movement displaced, the broken glass, dirt and dust. This creates a compelling dialectic between the promise or mythology of Minimalism and Modernism, and the reality of their existence in the world.