Sosnowska’s work generally falls into two categories: lines marking a shape in space, and deformed structures with emotional connotations. Soviet modernist architecture is an important conceptual reference for the artist, and her 2007 installation “Staircase” (V2, p. 185) is based on a symbol of the Soviet utopian ideal. Sosnowska creates a sense of the instability of the metal structure, compressing and twisting it. The distorted shape of the spiral staircase suggests a certain expressive gesture with respect to the crumpled, and then expanded, object, completely stripped of its functionality. This violent deformation allows the transition of the structure from architectural element to sculpture. Sosnowska is interested in transforming a staircase into a living organism, which, for example, can encircle entire exhibition halls, like a flexible vine in the 2016–2018 “Stair Rail” installation, or as in her 2010 “Spiral Staircase”, recall a skeleton with steps twisting around the backbone. In her 2012 public sculpture in New York, “Fir Tree”, Sosnowska creates a similar composition in which spiral stairs lead towards the ground, forming the silhouette of a tree “sprouting” amid the skyscrapers of the metropolis.
The “stair-tree” became a central motif for a number of artists who express a powerful and vital symbolism in their works. The American sculptor Lin Lisberger uses the form of an upward-rising structure as a metaphor for infinite possibilities that open up at the different stages of growing up and becoming a person. In Lisberger’s work, many variations of ladder structures, including the 2008 installation “High Journeys” (V1, p. 298) made of wood, have a launching platform, which correlates with the beginning of a new stage and a new journey… Boats, baskets, and more ladders become part of the “travel”.
“Ladders are one of the most fundamental architectural forms, suggesting movement through space and endless possibilities.”[12]
Rene Magritte, Forbidden literature, 1936, oil on canvas
Like any organism, a tree grows, changes and fades, and this in turn becomes the subject of close attention by the South Korean sculptor Myeongbeom Kim. His installation “Staircase” (V1, p. 305) was executed directly in the natural landscape, where the trunks of two trees connected by rungs and steps symbolically continue the life cycle. The natural arrangement of the installation echoes the “Tree in the Garden” motif – in the Christian interpretation of the biblical book of Genesis about the “Tree of Life”, which grants eternity, and the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil”, whose forbidden fruit has become a symbol of the mortality of human flesh.
The identification of the tree with the vital energy embedded within it is transformed into a metaphor for the creative flow in the painting of “The Truth about Comets” (V1, p. 304) by the American surrealist Dorothea Tanning (1945). Against the background of the winter landscape, a staircase appears, the railing of which sprouts with woody branches directed to the celestial bodies. Their very appearance is presented as a bewitching, magical spectacle, observed by mermaids personifying the artist herself. A staircase passing into a tree, whose steps go up into the sky, creates an image of a creative process leading to the freedom of imagination. Tanning’s interpretation of immersion in the irrational depths of the subconscious is replaced by a more sensual approach to the study of the surrounding reality of the Spanish artist and designer Nacho Carbonell.
“I like to see objects as living organisms, things that can come to life and surprise you with their behavior. My works are conceptual, not practical, they are tactile and I like them to tell a story that makes a point about an aspect of life.”[13]
In his street installation “The Playground Closes at Dusk” (V1, p. 318) (2011), four interactive objects are presented on high ladders, climbing on which the viewer can smell, hear, touch and see, following the author’s instructions. At the same time, the fifth part of the installation, “Memorabilia”, embodies human memory, which plays the role of the main repository of cause and effect relationships, emotions and impressions. The many small boxes at the top of the ladders symbolize a cloud of memories like those found in our own minds. For the artist the climb carried out by the viewer goes beyond the scope of physical effort and can be interpreted as a psychological journey to the deep levels of the subconscious. Aroused interest in introspection is translated as the main feature of the individual, which in this case is projected onto the ladder-object.
A similar visually constructed relationship between the installation and the viewer is emphasized by the work of the American artist Nick Clifford Simko in “Still Life with a Ladder” (V1, p. 215) (2012). The stepladder taken as a basis is identified with the body, assembled from objects sequentially placed on the steps, such as a classic plaster head, flowers, a phallic figure and boots, which in general is built into a portrait. The addition of shoes makes the generalized nature of the comparison of the stairs with the figure of a person more personal, introducing an everyday detail of identification. An even more personalized image endowed with psychological characteristics is created in the installation of the Spanish photographer Chema Madoz in “Disabled Ladder” (2003). A crutch-based design loses its stability and integrity, which creates a convincing emotionally charged focus on physical features. This emphasizes the clarity of comparing the ladder with a living organism that is capable of experiencing suffering and pain.
“Yes, the main thing in our life is stairs, because in the end any road is the same staircase, only at the beginning invisible. And curves are especially dangerous when, due to turns, you don’t feel that you are going lower and lower. This is what the old staircase leading upwards told me, which suffered greatly when they rolled down it. Do not offend the stairs!”[14]
Many artists of the XX–XXI centuries, realizing the irreversible process of the de-sacralization of art, appeal to their audience through the personification of the art form. Even Hegel at the beginning of the 19thcentury noted the loss of sincere reverence for the work. Today one can observe how religious consciousness gives way to social consciousness by visualizing everyday life. By putting forth new, or updating old, approaches during crises in the worldview and identifying themselves with some of them, artists bring personal experience to their work.
French-born American artist Louise Bourgeois (V1, p. 251), in the “Woman House” series, places a brightly lit staircase inside a female body enclosed in the shape of a silent, dark building, making it the only possible way of communication. The house serves as both a safe haven and a prison. Its complete confluence with the figure reflects the inner world of a woman who is enslaved but rebellious. In an earlier series by Bourgeois “He Disappeared in Complete Silence” (1947) (V2, p. 251), the theme of alienation between people, which is portrayed through lonely architectural structures, is revealed. The composition of sheet 8, filled with a surreal spirit, allows the artist to combine multiple ladders that have lost their basic function of a “connecting element” and hang in space in defiance of gravity. From the embodiment of her personal history, through the image of the ladder, Bourgeois goes on to explore issues of gender self-identification, which, in turn, are the central theme of the feminist trend in art. In the graphic variations “Mother and Child” (1999/2000), the staircase forms the silhouette of a high-rise building, and the figure depicted at its foot allows us to discuss the place of women in contemporary society. Another form of stairs in the work of Bourgeois is a spiral, which is identified with the image of reversed time, return to oneself, to one’s body. This psychological component is disclosed in the installation “Cage (Last Climb)” (V1, p. 315) (2008), executed shortly before her death, in the center of which is a spiral staircase, preserved from her old Brooklyn studio. Going beyond the allotted space of the cell, it symbolizes the release of the artist herself from the shackles of memories of the past.
