LONDON.- This autumn, the South London Gallery (SLG) will present Weight of Matter, a major solo exhibition by Polish artist Monika Sosnowska (b. 1972, Ryki). Spanning the Main Gallery and two floors of the Fire Station, the exhibition will feature some of Sosnowska’s monumental sculptures, including deconstructed forms rendered in steel, concrete and other materials associated with modernist architecture.
Sosnowska’s sculptural practice explores urban transformation, and how architecture reflects social and political change, in particular the implosion of the Communist regime in Poland and the legacy of modernism. Her interest lies in the impact that architecture and space have on people and the challenges involved in transforming existing structures.
At the SLG, a monumental site-specific installation in the Victorian Main Gallery will unite a group of previously disparate large-scale works suspended from the distinctive beams beneath the vast glass ceiling lantern. Made of construction materials such as steel and rebar, and some weighing over half a tonne, this huge display will seemingly test the fabric of a 135-year-old institution. The skeletal works will hang from the rafters like carcasses, remnants of architectural and broader histories in which individual elements merge into an intertwined and sometimes incomprehensible mass.
In the Fire Station building, which dates back to 1867, Sosnowska’s works will again be positioned to be in direct response to the architecture and history of the gallery spaces. A sculpture based on the form of a collapsed black metal staircase will be shown in the former engine room to be in clear dialogue with the Fire Station’s new white metal stairs which were inspired by the architectural language of fire escapes. The adjacent gallery overlooking a leafy outdoor space will be overtaken by sculptures with plant-like forms to create a concrete garden of rebar branches and collapsing trees. Upstairs in what used to be the firemen’s living quarters, painted steel works reminiscent of crumpled paper and peeling walls will hark back to the dilapidated state of the building before it was converted for its current use.
Sosnowska is known for working with industrial materials and often on a large scale, but her ideas are developed through the creation of intricate paper models, which are rarely seen outside the studio and are shown here for the first time in London. These small-scale maquettes draw on the architectural tradition of model-making and reveal a fascinating aspect of the artist’s working practice.
Monika Sosnowska studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań and completed postgraduate training at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. She is now based in Warsaw. Recent solo exhibitions include Monika Sosnowska: An Order Apart at EMMA (Espoo Museum of Modern Art), Espoo, Finland (2024); Ghosts at Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, Germany (2024); and a major presentation at Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Switzerland (2023). Her work is currently on show at the Princess Estelle Sculpture Park, Rosendal, Royal Djurgården, Stockholm.
