Monika Sosnowska’s sculptural language emerges from a process of experimentation with, and the appropriation of, construction materials such as steel beams, concrete, reinforcing rods and pipes. These elements – the solid and rigid foundations of buildings – are manipulated and warped, taking on an independence in which their former functionality is implied yet defunct. The formal language of her works echoes different contradictory Modernisms: that of the Polish constructivism of the 1930s; the minimal and conceptual tendencies of the international art of the 1960s and 1970s; and modernist architecture as experienced in Eastern Europe.

Sosnowska was born in 1972 in Ryki, Poland and witnessed the change of Poland’s political system from Communism to Democracy, and the the heavy impact this had upon society and her environment. In 2003, she achieved international renown with her work ‘The Corridor,’ an intervention that formed part of the Arsenale exhibition of the 50th Venice Biennale. Four years later, Sosnowska represented Poland at the 52nd Venice Biennale with the monumental installation ‘1:1’. The almost organic construction of steel beams she created was intended to exhibit the Polish Pavilion itself. Using parts of the building’s infrastructure, Sosnowska occupied the entire space with a second architectural structure on the inside. ‘1:1’ not only reflects the architecture of many of the Venetian pavilions, but at the same time, brings to the fore the global discourse on functionality, in a marked departure from modernism’s preoccupation with style.

In her recent works, Sosnowska has incorporated elements of modernist architecture and recognizable details including staircases, handrails, gates and window structures to create unexpected, even uncanny, encounters. She treats buildings as a site of memory, and is adept at conveying both political and psychological significance through her work. She quotes architectural irregularities, collaging different elements together to form a whole that appears at once both confused, yet intentionally and attractively designed. Space is encountered as a psychosomatic quality, as political as its experience is personal, forever veering in the mind of the viewer between the uncanny and the Sublime.

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