Public Art Fund Talks: Monika Sosnowska

Monika Sosnowska’s site-specific interventions and large-scale sculptures utilize scale, optical illusion, and existing architectural forms to challenge our perceptions and expectations of architectural space. For more than ten years, she has created increasingly complex installations, including 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).

Fall 2012 Talks at The New School: Between Art and Architecture
The built environment has long been a source of inspiration to contemporary artists. From Gordon Matta-Clark’s abandoned building “cuts” to Doris Salcedo’s site-specific interventions and Dan Graham’s Pavilions, artists have utilized architecture as a means to engage the public. This fall, Public Art Fund presents a series of talks by a new generation of artists whose work engages the built environment as both a point of departure and source of inspiration. Drawing on elements of architectural and design history—including Modernism, Brutalism, and even DIY construction—these artists address the psychological, social, and cultural significance of the urban landscape.