Monika Sosnowska’s expansive sculptural works seem familiar and yet strange in their aesthetic uniqueness. A bent T-profile of 5m height leans against a wall of Kunstraum Dornbirn. The bar curves up at the bend, the profile with its 900 kilograms no longer carries anything but itself. A steel tube with a diameter of 182 centimetres is torn through the middle, reminiscent of the tear in a sheet of paper, and rolled up over a length of 10 metres. The beginning and end of the tube are circularly intact, lying and standing in space. Next to it hangs from the ceiling a 7.5-metre-high folded steel scaffolding that rests lightly with one corner on the floor. A bundle of steel struts protrudes directly from the back right wall of the exhibition hall. As if bridled by gravity, they resemble a kind of oversized ponytail. Sosnowska provides us with a contextual shift par excellence. Skilfully, she oscillates between contextual disclosure and sensual experience. The beauty of her works stands on equal footing with the technical, historical and psychological components of her strategy of artistic appropriation. She includes us collectively and individually, thematising our built environment, our living space and social co-existence through the use of building elements which, in their temporal permanence and fashions, conflict with or sustain the respective present.
(Text by Kunsthalle Dornbirn)