MONIKA SOSNOWSKA

Sosnowska’s early works distorted conventional forms of interior spaces to explore the potential for disorientation, disruption, and even fear. Installations and sculptures featured wonky floors, walls and ceilings; lopsided corridors leading nowhere; and doors opening onto another door, and another, and another. There’s an absurdity to these works which highlighted the challenges involved in transitioning from one space, ideology or social system, to another. The implication is that change doesn’t necessarily result in progress. As Sosnowska’s practice evolved it included deconstructed staircases, handrails and gates, twisted and contorted almost beyond recognition. Defying our expectations of how certain materials can be used, and eradicating functionality from these familiar architectural features, Sosnowska created her own, distinctive visual language. An enormous cardboard cube with a cutout doorway, squashed between two walls, was in fact an enamelled steel replica of a makeshift shop, typical of those which sprung up in Poland in the post-communist era.

For the 2007 Venice Biennale, Sosnowska re-constructed the steel frame of a 1960s office building, twisted and skewed to fit into the Polish Pavilion. Challenging the power dynamics between institutions and artists, the work spilled out beyond the gallery walls, refusing to be confined within them.

For her South London Gallery exhibition, Sosnowska brings a selection of works made over the past 14 years into dialogue with the architecture and history of the SLG’s buildings. A monumental new installation in the Main Gallery unites a group of largescale sculptures suspended from the ceiling beams of the purpose-built Victorian gallery. This huge display, in which some of the works weigh over half a tonne, tests the fabric of the 135-year-old institution. It also upturns the age-old tradition of sculptures being shown on plinths or the floor, influencing the way in which viewers interact with the works and introducing an impression of precarity. The skeletal forms hang from the rafters like carcasses, remnants of architectural and broader histories merged into an intertwined mass. Some of the works are to scale replicas of the stalls from one of the many markets which sprung up following the fall of the communist regime and the easing of restrictions on trading.

Eventually, however, new buildings, supermarkets and department stores took over and many of the markets closed. Sosnowska’s market stalls are strung up and redundant, in various states of ruin. Another suspended metal sculpture mimics a huge curl of paper, whilst a three-dimensional scribble in mid-air is made of lengths of rebar, manipulated into elegantly intertwining curves.

At the SLG’s Fire Station annexe Sosnowska’s works are positioned to be in direct response to the architecture and history of the building, which dates back to 1867. In Gallery 1, the former engine room, a twisted black metal staircase is slumped on the floor, in stark contrast to the functioning white stairs which are a prominent architectural feature in the Fire Station. In Gallery 2, which overlooks a leafy outdoor space, sculptures with plantlike forms create a concrete jungle of rebar branches and collapsing trees. Drawing on the materials and visual language of demolition, these works reflect on the predominance of construction sites in Warsaw where the artist lives.