Monika Sosnowska. Tower
John Hill
8. septiembre 2014
Photo: John Hill/World-Architects
Like a beached whale of black steel, Polish artist Monika Sosnowska's Tower sculpture – all 110 feet (33-1/2 meters) of it – sprawls across the large gallery space of Hauser & Wirth's West 18th Street location in New York City.
It's no coincidence that the sculpture's size, materiality and name give it an architectural character, as Sosnowska based the piece on Mies van der Rohe's famous 29-story towers at 860 and 880 Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. Completed in 1951, seven years before the even more iconic Seagram Building in Manhattan, the pair of residential towers is considered a primary influence on the glass-walled skyscrapers now dotting cities around the world. Working with engineers and fabricators, Tower is a full-scale portion of the façade (steel plates, decorative I-beams, and even the levers of the operable windows) that is bent and disfigured into its long, cylindrical form. It's an amazing work that needs to be experienced in person; it can be seen at Hauser & Wirth until 25 October 2014.