Winter Garden

The landscape installation of the title, made up of over a dozen metal sculptures of flowers, is on permanent show against the backdrop of flat Mazovian fields. The work was created in cooperation with residents from the village of Kurówek, who also contributed their old farming equipment – the discarded tools of their former livelihood. Transformed into a series of plant sculptures through their collective efforts, it brings to mind the harvest that was once carried out using these very tools.

The colourful composition, set against the winter landscape, might, on the one hand, serve as a reference to the open-air traditions of art in the 1960s and ‘70s and the tendency of that era for various artists and art groups to collaborate with one another. On the other hand, it takes up the inclination towards the reuse of materials, the selection of certain elements and using one’s own imagination to repurpose them. Objects that have been created for a particular purpose can be translated into a metaphor that describes the shift in the contemporary character of the village’s identity, which is no longer defined by its ties to the earth or to farming as their primary livelihood.

The piece is one of the first of the artist’s works that are based on a simple juxtaposition of bold colours, a tendency that Rycharski systematically returns to in other projects taken up over the past few years in the public space. It’s also one of his first endeavours in the area of found objects and finding ways to work through their history and physical aspects.

Show description