CITY LIMITS

CITY LIMITS is an international exhibition presenting works of three artists-sculptors: Asta Gröting (* 1961, Germany), Monika Sosnowska (* 1972, Poland) and Yael Efrati (* 1978, Israel). The exhibition will be presented at the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko from November 2021 to February 2022, and next year at the Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf (Germany, 11 June  - 14 August 2022), while in 2023 at the MoBy in Bat Yam (Israel).

The exhibition focuses on different strategies of architectural reconstruction based on personal memories of the mentioned artists and provides a new view at the relations between man and their historical and cultural environment. What makes a starting point for the presented works is not only architecture, city and man but also the remarkable capacity for observation and sensitivity to the surroundings. It results from the artists’ interest in hyperrealism and photographic realization of their works.

The artists were growing up in very dissimilar socio-political contexts. Asta Gröting  was raised in West Germany developing  in prosperity. Monika Sosnowska’s adolescence fell on the period of the declining socialism in Poland and difficult socio-political transformations of the 80s and 90s. While Yael Efrati was growing up in Israel in the family of immigrants who had just arrived from Eastern Europe and had to build their existence anew.

For Gröting, Sosnowska and Efrati the stiff frames of architecture, constructions and perceiving woman’s role by conservative society do not pose any limitations. Thanks to the architectural monumentality and at the same time the lyricism of their works, the artists overcome all sorts of restrictions, including the social and cultural ones. They move around in space in a brilliant way, creatively coordinate complex processes and in an unconventional way use building materials, technologies and construction elements of architecture. Characteristic features of these sculptors’ works is a clash of contradictions – matter and idea, monumentality and fragility, the austerity of an object and its lyrical impact in the architecturally closed space of a city, delicacy and wildness of the form. The contrasts pertinently render the tensions and uncertainty of reality.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue issued in four languages (Polish, German, Hebrew, English) including also the documentation of the presentation in Orońsko. The catalogue will be published at the beginning of 2022.