1:1

The artist’s latest project, called 1:1, is not, however, a nostalgic return to communist Poland’s favourite architectural solutions but rather the consequence of a reflection on the post-war architectural concepts analysed from the angle of the local, Eastern European, surprisingly vital mutation of the International Movement. During the People’s Poland era, progress was often restricted to impulsive, rash (and often absurdity-producing) modernisation. The requirement of ‘modernity’ in post-war Poland was a top-down imposed decision, controlled through a series of orders. In order to meet the adopted targets, contractors had to build quickly, in a slapdash manner, and in accordance with the official design requirements. Living among microscopic bathrooms, blind kitchens, crooked walls, purposeless alcoves, labyrinths of pipes leading nowhere and rolling parquet floors became the daily reality for the inhabitants of the sprawling housing developments. The artist decided to use an important part of the former building infrastructure (Fabryka Domów Mieszkalnych, or the Housing Block Factory) to erect an experimental sculpture devoid of the burden of functionality.

Today, modernist buildings in Poland, as elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe, are being modified. In the contemporary realities, governed by the brutal laws of the free-market economy, the coarse charm of the past decades’ architectural ‘ballast’ is being laboriously painted over. The practice has become widespread of ‘repackaging’ unattractive buildings, and new facades are often erected to conceal earlier structures. Many important post-war architectural works in Poland have been slated for demolition, such as the Supersam department store in Warsaw (opened 1962), one of the era’s most notable designs. Some highly industrialised regions, such as Upper Silesia, are today turning into cemeteries of post-industrial structures, remaining since the 1990s in a state of semi-decay.

In a number of recent works Monika Sosnowska transgressed the, more or less artificial, border between contemporary and architecture. In her own words:

‘It seems to me that what I do is somehow in opposition to what architecture stands for. I also think that my art is a completely different discipline, even though I focus on the same problems as architecture does: the forming of space. Utilitarianism is architecture’s fundamental attribute. Architecture organises, introduces order, reflects political and social systems. My works introduce chaos and uncertainty instead’.