5 Unconventional Materials in Contemporary Art

In contemporary art, a sculpture is no longer a permanent monument—it can be a message, an experiment, and sometimes even serves as a testament to personal emotions and experiences. The collection held by the Zachęta—National Gallery of Art includes many works of art that break with the canon of traditional sculpture, where artists have used surprising, unconventional materials. Let’s explore five of them.

1. Medicaments—Placebo by Zbigniew Libera

Drug packaging as a work of art? Zbigniew Libera has created objects that are almost indistinguishable from real medical preparations. The Placebo (1995) consists of 71 identical boxes containing pure suppository mass, with no active substance, which the artist commissioned from a pharmaceutical factory.

Placebo treads a fine line between the form of a pharmaceutical product and a ready-made object for the gallery. It is a witty commentary on how the media, advertising, and the pharmaceutical industry manipulate our collective consciousness. Libera uses irony to denounce our tendency to believe in the fast-acting remedy, and hints that sometimes a mere suggestion is enough for us to feel better.

2. Plasticine—Untitled by Jadwiga Sawicka

Jadwiga Sawicka’s Untitled (1999) is a sculpture made of plasticine, a material usually associated with a children’s pastime rather than the art gallery. The artist chose this “banal” raw material on purpose, forming an object that looks like a piece of clothing or a body part, suspended between corporeality and its representation. The smell, softness, and subdued colors of plasticine create an intimate, sensuous atmosphere.

The artist uses the material not just as a means of expression, but also as a medium that conveys physical and emotional experience. It is a study in the expressive power of the material, helpful in weaving a tale of everyday life and vulnerability.

3. Moss, Mud, and Flowers—Guitar by Krzysztof Zarębski

Krzysztof Zarębski has mastered combining ready-made objects into surprising constellations. In his installation titled Guitar (1988), he put together artificial elements such as – plexiglass, metal, and audio tape – with organic items such as moss, a flower petal, dried-out mud, and human hair. The resulting visual collage is a symbolic record of man’s encounter with reality, in both its physical and emotional aspects.

Although Guitar is not literally a musical instrument, it does evoke memories of the touch, sounds, and smell. The work is an attempt at restoring the beauty of “ugly” objects—items that have once been rejected, but whose value is now rediscovered by the artist.

4. Rice—Hiny by Krzysztof Bednarski

In the sculpture titled Hiny (1982), Krzysztof Michał Bednarski enclosed rice grains and printing ink in a glass bottle, and put them together with authentic screen-printing tools he had used to produce underground newspapers during martial law in Poland. The expectation was for the rice to absorb the ink and gradually turn from white to red over time. This way, the work was meant to influence the viewer not only visually, but also through the process itself, as a slow-paced record of the change.

The process, however, was disrupted by an unexpected incident. In 1991, while being transported to Tokyo for the artist’s exhibition, the bottle fell over, and nearly all of the rice turned red. Exhibition organizers wanted to replace it with new rice but did not have the same type as used originally—and went for Japanese rice instead. The artist accepted that accidental intervention in the material of his work.

5. Polyester—Tumours Personified by Alina Szapocznikow

In Tumours Personified (1971), one of the most moving series created by Alina Szapocznikow, polyester becomes a vehicle for expressing intimate physical truth. The work consists of over a dozen head casts, which are deformed self-portraits. Born of the artist’s watching her own body disintegrate, the sculptures record her struggle with cancer and express attempts at coming to terms with the disease. By sinking cotton wool, newspapers, and photographs in the transparent mass, Szapocznikow created sculptures that both portray her and commemorate the pain.

The artist made the first self-portrait cast of her own face in 1965, and went on to produce casts of various body parts while experimenting with new materials such as polyester resin. Over time, autobiographical topics came to dominate her works. The late 1960s saw the creation of the series titled Bellies, Fetishes and Tumours, with photographs sunk into the polyester mass; as the artist’s disease progressed, that last series was continued as Great Tumours, Souvenirs, and finally Tumours Personified.

Contemporary art continues to surprise us, not only with its forms, but also with the unconventional materials used to create it. Artists’ hands turn the seemingly banal or ephemeral materials into powerful means of expression. The collection at the Zachęta—National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, Poland, proves that the limits of art are defined by the limits of imagination, or even extend further beyond.

Text by Justyna Wydra