Gizela Mickiewicz (b. 1984) and Roman StaÅ?czak (b. 1969) are Warsaw-based sculptors born a generation apart, whose work shares a brutalist appeal. The show, co-organized by the Polish capital’s Galeria Stereo, is weighty in every sense. Both artists handle materials like steel, concrete and glass with a certain matter-of-factness, but close looking also reveals flashes of elegant wit and even suggestions of profound spiritual insight. Mickiewicz creates subtle poetry from deceptively simple juxtapositions; one striking work, Total of All Distractions (2015), features a mesh sail suspended on thin metal poles that project from a cylindrical glass base. The veteran StaÅ?czak’s sculptures take time to view and appear to have taken eons to make. In Misquic II (2014), an overturned bathtub appears to have been coated with layers of metal, a process evoking the labor of meditation and ritual.
Pictured: Roman StaÅ?czak: From 2nd to 3rd, 2015, wooden cupboard and wood chips, 22¾ by 38 by 39¼ inches. Courtesy Bureau, New York and Galeria Stereo, Warsaw.