Monika Sosnowska

Monika Sosnowska is a polish sculptor who experiments with the visual language of architecture, rendering recognisable objects obsolete through processes of transformation. Chairs might be elongated and tangled together; a handrail could be stretched to its limit, reformed like a loop-de-loop rollercoaster— or blocks of concrete might encase fragments of built structures, such as handles, bolts, pipes, or latticed steel. Although formally striking, the artist’s sculptures don’t rely on absurdist juxtapositions in the style of Dadaism or Surrealism, the process is instead guided by the socio-political resonance of the chosen materials. In particular, Sosnowska's use of substances such as rebar, steel and concrete pays homage to the artisans that helped to rebuild Poland’s cities during the post-soviet era with these materials. The maiming of these sculptures speaks to the late-capitalist tendency to tear down these historic buildings. Meditating on the immense power of architecture in both a social and political sense, Sosnowska’s contorted structures have a quiet power to them, functioning dually as odes to Constructivism and warning signs for architecture’s brutal capacity.