Ghost
Monika Sosnowska, Alexandra Metcalf and Öyvind Fahlström
13.06 – 12.07.2025
Belenius
Opening
Thursday 12.06 at 5 – 7 PM
Monika Sosnowska (b. 1972 in Ryki, Poland) lives and works in Warsaw, Poland.
The Polish sculptor Monika Sosnowska is regarded as one of the most significant contemporary artists today. Her often massive sculptures and architectural installations in steel, concrete or other building materials engage, from an Eastern European point of view, with the legacy of modernism and its promises of progress – and what remains of it.
Sosnowska grew up in Socialist Poland and experienced the country’s transformation into a democratic market economy after 1989. As an artist she has observed the changes in society and the built environment which followed on from that, and which continue to resonate until today. Alongside selected works from the last 20 years, the exhibition also shows many never-before-seen models and photographs from Sosnowska’s studio and archive, which provide a fascinating insight into her artistic process. (Text by Zentrum Paul Klee).
Monika Sosnowska exhibited at EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Espoo 2024, Centrum Paul Klee, Bern 2023, Kunstraum Dornbirn, Dornbirn 2022, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, both 2020, and more. Monika Sosnowska represented Poland at the 52nd Venice Biennale and participated again in 2011 at the 54th Venice Biennale. Her works are included in the collections of Centre Pompidou, Paris, Fundação de Serralves, Porto, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Tate Modern, London, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Kunstsammlung NRW, Dusseldorf and Museo Tamayo, Mexico, among others.
– Galerie Gisela Capitain
Alexandra Metcalf (b. 1992 in London, UK) lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
Alexandra Metcalf works in painting and sculpture, reinterpreting the history of gendered labor through ornamental traditions. Metcalf considers the way historic counter-culture movements shape aesthetics, with the intense patterns and coloring of her paintings representing domestic landscapes full of anxiety. Metcalf mythologizes a dramatic descent into madness through exaggerated yet self-aware images related to historically established notions of femininity. One could see this as a satire of literary tropes or an attempt to depict the heightened levels of dramatic tension characteristic of operatic storytelling, where most things are to be seen in parentheses. Her fascination with craft is coupled with attempts to regender labor-intensive mediums historically seen as masculine, including stained glass, bronze casting, and handcrafted woodwork.
Alexandra Metcalf graduated from the Chelsea College of Art and Design, London and Rhode Island School of Design, Providence. Her work has recently been exhibited at No. 9 Cork Street, London, FRAC Corsica, Corte, Forde, Geneva, Kunsthalle Zürich, Champ Lacombe, Biarritz, 15 Orient Gallery, New York and Ginny on Frederick, London. Metcalf’s work is held in The Museum of Modern Art Library Collection, New York, The Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, Brown University, Providence and The Perimeter, London.
A solo exhibition by Alexandra Metcalf is open at The Perimeter, London, until 25.07.2025 and her work will be exhibited at Art Basel 2025.
– Capitain Petzel
Öyvind Fahlström (b. 1928, São Paulo, Brazil – d. 1976, Stockholm, Sweden) was a Swedish artist known for his intellectually rich and visually complex works that explored semiotics, politics, and narrative through experimental visual systems.
Fahlström often employed cryptic symbols, layered texts, and diagrammatic structures to create works that suggested sprawling, open-ended narratives. One such example is Sketch for World Map Part 1 (Americas, Pacific) (1972), a piece emblematic of his ambition to “create a world of situations and actions in a contradictory and discontinuing time-space.”
Born to Swedish and Norwegian parents, Fahlström was sent to Stockholm at the age of 10. With the outbreak of World War II, he remained in Sweden, where he completed his education and eventually became a Swedish citizen. He studied classics and art history at the University of Stockholm, laying the foundation for his multidisciplinary practice.
Fahlström began his career as a writer, contributing poetry, plays, and translations to Swedish publications. In 1961, he relocated to New York, which became his creative base for much of his life. He became deeply embedded in the American avant-garde scene, participating in Happenings and forming connections that spurred a prolific period of artistic production. His work was featured in the 1964 and 1966 Venice Biennales, and he continued to write and stage experimental plays alongside his visual practice.
Fahlström passed away in Stockholm in 1976. His legacy lives on in major collections, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others.