MONIKA SOSNOWSKA TO PRESENT NEW SCULPTURE IN FIRST SOLO EXHIBITION AT HAUSER & WIRTH

Press Release

Media contact:

Andrea Schwan, Andrea Schwan Inc.

+1 917 371 5023, hwny@andreaschwan.com

New York, NY... Tweaking and torqing the formal minimalist idiom, 38-year old Polish artist Monika Sosnowska conjoins architecture and sculpture to explore the poetics and politics of space. She builds forms in response to specific sites, then manipulates them – collapsing, twisting and squeezing her work into alternate settings, creating labyrinths and optical illusions, birthing parasitic structures in ways that alter not only our perceptions of the physical areas around us but of psychological states within. Highlighting the banality of the material world we inhabit, Sosnowksa recalls the cultural conceits that produced buildings and their details, often those of the failed utopia of People's Poland. Within the intense emotional force field of her work many of the things we assume, are simply no longer certain.

Hauser & Wirth New YorkNovember 5 – December 18, 2010Opening: Friday, November 5, 6 – 8 PM

32 EAST 69TH STREET NEW YORK NY 10021TELEPHONE +1 212 794 4970 FACSIMILE +1 212 794 4971

HAUSER & WIRTH

On November 5th, Hauser & Wirth New York will present the gallery's first solo exhibition by the artist. Monika Sosnowska will feature seven major new, unique sculptures created specifically for this exhibition. These will remain on view through December 18th.

The works presented at Hauser & Wirth are based upon Sosnowska's recent residency at Artpace San Antonio, and are inspired by the ubiquitous emergency stairwells that scale the sides of old buildings throughout that city and others where the artist has spent time. The image of a zigzagging fire escape has become intuitive within Western architectural iconography. In response, Sosnowska has fabricated her own stairwell, stripping it of its functionality by dismantling the main elements – a horizontal metal platform, a balustrade, stairs, a ladder extension, and so forth – and giving each component its own autonomous sculptural identity. Together the pieces would comprise a small, working fire escape; taken apart, however, the segments are misshapen and warped beyond use, presented as a series of individual vignettes in space.

Sosnowska's formal language echoes different contradictory modernisms: that of the Polish constructivism of the 1930s, the minimal and conceptual tendencies of the international art of the 1960s and 1970s, and the Socialist architecture found in Eastern European states. History is thus encountered as both local and international, a force that moves at different speeds resulting in the buckling of cultures under its pressure. Space is encountered as a psychosomatic quality, as political as its experience is personal, forever veering in the mind of the viewer between the uncanny and the Sublime.

About the Artist

Monika Sosnowska was born 1972 in Ryki, Poland. She attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan, Poland, from 1993 to 1998, before participating in various residency programs, including a study at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, from 1999 to 2000, and a residency at S-AIR, in Sapporo, Japan, in 2002. While studying in the painting department at Poznan, Sosznowska found that the 'painting started to escape her canvas.' She began to create works that played with both two-dimensional painting and three-dimensional space, finally giving up the canvas altogether and instead using the space itself as a sort of 3-D painting.

Sosnowska first achieved international renown in 2003 with The Corridor, an intervention that formed part of the Arsenale exhibition of the 50th Venice Biennale. That year, she received the Bâloise Prize at Art Basel as well as the Polityka's Passport award given by Poland's most prestigious weekly.

Solo exhibitions by the artist include 'Projects 83' at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York (2006) and Sprengel Museum, Hanover, Germany (2006). Sosnowska also

represented Poland at the Venice Biennale 2007 in Italy. Group exhibitions include 'Les Promesses du Passé', Pompidou-Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris, France (2010); 'Monika Sosnowska/Andrea Zittel', Schaulager, Munchenstein/Basel, Switzerland (2008); and 'Stay Forever and Ever and Ever', South London Gallery, England (2007).

Among Sosnowska's upcoming projects are solo exhibition at the Tamayo Contemporary Art Museum in Mexico (2011) and the Cleveland Museum of Art (2011).

About Hauser & Wirth

Hauser & Wirth is a global enterprise, founded in Zurich in 1992 by Iwan and Manuela Wirth and Ursula Hauser. In 1996 the Zurich gallery opened in the former Löwenbräu brewery building, along with other contemporary art galleries, the Kunsthalle Zürich, and the Migros Museum. In 2003, Hauser & Wirth opened Hauser & Wirth London on Piccadilly in an historic building designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, adding a new and energetic dimension to London's growing importance as an international art center.

In 2006, Hauser & Wirth at Colnaghi was created on London's Old Bond Street. Hauser & Wirth New York opened to the public on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in September 2009. In September 2010, Hauser & Wirth re-located their Zurich space to a new temporary location at Hubertus Exhibitions while the Löwenbräu building undergoes major renovation. In October 2010, the gallery opened a significant new London space on Savile Row.

Hauser & Wirth New York is open to visitors Tuesday through Saturday, 10 am until 6 pm. The general public can find additional information about the gallery, its exhibitions and programs online at: www.hauserwirth.com.

For additional press information or to obtain images for publication, please contact hwny@andreaschwan.com.

Forthcoming Exhibitions:

Lee Lozano'Tools'January 12 – February 19, 2011

Berlinde De BruyckereMarch 2 – April 16, 2011

Subodh GuptaMay 6 – June 18, 2011

Press Contact:Andrea Schwanhwny@andreaschwan.com+1 917 371 5023

Full Copyright and Courtesy Credits:

Installation view, Hauser & Wirth New York, 2010

Balustrade2010Steel, paint, PVC337.8 x 177.8 x 25.4 cm / 133 x 70 x 10 in

Stairs2010Steel, paint165.1 x 294.6 x 88.9 cm / 65 x 116 x 35 in

Fence2010Steel, paint, concrete226.1 x 180.3 x 365.8 cm / 89 x 71 x 144 in

Spiral2010Steel, paint330.2 x 165.1 x 91.4 cm / 130 x 65 x 36 in

Handrail2010Steel, paint, PVC200.7 x 345.4 x 162.6 cm / 79 x 136 x 64 in

All images © Monika SosnowskaCourtesy the artist and Hauser & WirthPhoto: Thomas Mueller