Source: Public Art Fund
The Polish artist known for her twisted staircases to nowhere has created a signature outdoor installation for the Public Art Fund in New York, meshing concepts of a natural world with iconic forms of the urban landscape
Drawing upon the same inspiration as many of her earlier works, the 40-foot-tall sculpture nestled in the heart of Manhattan's Doris C. Freedman Plaza builds on the architectural scope and significance of modernist architectural elements. The object holds significance for the urbanisation of Sosnowska's native Poland, as well as for other nations, including the U.S.
Much like her 2010 piece Staircase, conceived for the K21 in Düsseldorf, the functional object of the staircase is manipulated - pulled and bent - to achieve a new and abstract state. The current piece, Fir Tree, mimics the shape of an evergreen, the branches of steps bowing towards the ground as the trunk of the piece soars skyward. Situated at the intersection of one of the busiest, most developed areas of New York and the relatively wild expanse of Central Park, the piece highlights the juxtaposition and transition from cultivated landscape to urban space.
Nicholas Baume, director of the Public Art Fund, said that one of the most interesting aspects of Sosnowska's work is "the kind of tension she creates" and how she takes a utilitarian object and translates "what was once a utilitarian object into a new dynamic abstraction".
Monika Sosnowska (born 1972 in Ryki) is one of most recognized Polish artists of her generation. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan and Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. She has become known for her monumental sculptures and architectural interventions, in which she plays with scale and optical illusion to challenge the perception of space and destabilize conventional ideas. As a point of departure she focuses on the irrational problems of the given space, which often extends into the realm of architecture. As an artist who grew up in Poland in the 1970s and '80s in the midst of modernist functional architecture, she often refers to the post-war elements of the urban landscape. Over the past ten years she has created works that are increasingly complex, such as a series of doors that shrink in size until viewers are unable to move through them (Entrance, Sculpture Center, 2003), a scale model of a communist housing block crushed to fit into the Polish Pavilion for the Venice Biennale (1:1, 2007) and an external staircase, as found in Poland's Socialist housing, oversized, twisted and leading nowhere (Staircase, Dusseldorf, 2010). She has exhibited her works all over the world.
Her latest work Fir Tree is to be unveiled at the Doris C. Freedman Plaza, Central Park (corner of 60th Street and Fifth Avenue) on the 24th of October 2012 and remain until the 17th of February 2013. That evening at 6:30 p.m. the artist will give a talk at the New School, titled Between Art and Architecture. The project has been put together by the Public Art Fund in collaboration with the Polish Cultural Institute New York.
For more information, see: www.publicartfund.org
Editor: Agnieszka Le Nart
Source: Public Art Fund, The Modern Institute, Polish Cultural Institute in New York