Monika Sosnowska: An Order Apart

Sculptor Monika Sosnowska (b. 1972) is known for her architectonic sculptures that she makes out of building materials. What especially interests her is the impact that architecture and space have on people, and the difficulty of changing existing structures.  

The large-scale works interact directly with the architecture of the exhibition space. They offer the viewer a new perspective on the architecture of the WeeGee building and its history as a printing house. In her works, Sosnowska uses identifiable materials: steel beams, concrete, and reinforcing bars. She turns familiar, even quite mundane ingredients, into something surprising, changing the way we look at them. 

The artist’s interest in altering meanings and materials, as well as her interest in modernism, originates from her youth in Poland during the turn of the 1980s and 1990s.  At that time, the country’s political system changed from people’s republic to democracy, and this had a far-reaching impact on society as well as the environment. Sosnowska’s works comment, among other things, on the significance of the buildings from the socialist era and on people’s relationship to them.