Monika Sosnowska's Twisted Steel Tower Reimagines International Style Architecture at Hauser & Wirth

Polish artist Monika Sosnowska's monumental sculpture Tower (2014) dominated Hauser & Wirth's New York gallery from September 5 to October 25, 2014. The 105-foot-long work, fabricated from industrial black-painted steel, sprawled horizontally across the floor at 511 West 18th Street. Sosnowska, who represented Poland at the 52nd Venice Biennale with 1:1 (2007), created Tower by first developing a maquette before engineers and technicians scaled it up. The sculpture replicates the façade of Mies van der Rohe's Lake Shore Drive apartment buildings in Chicago, but the steel structure has been twisted, crumpled, and deliberately broken into over fifty pieces for transport. This manipulation transforms the International Style architecture into a horizontal helix that viewers could walk around completely. While the work makes no explicit reference to the World Trade Center, its debut in New York during the September 11 anniversary week and its resemblance to twisted steel skeletons evoke those associations. The Warsaw-based artist frequently documents demolished and abandoned sites in her hometown, connecting histories of destruction between cities. Tower's fabrication involved breaking the completed work apart, contributing to its poignant presence. The sculpture's formal beauty emerges from its mangled steel ribs, with one end opening wide and the other narrowing, creating a winding pathway that bathes in sunlight.