Balls are round and filled with air. They can be solid-colored and of varying size. Psychologically they are always recognizable as balls; they are one of the classic toys. Marzena Nowakʼs sculptures fulfill these expectations. The “ball” is divided into blue and white segments, seems airy and looks like summer. Perhaps it has gotten a bit too large, but it is the over-dimensional quality that is alluring. It awakes memories: a smaller example, but with a similar impression of color, is what Peter Weibel used in 1966/7 in Expanded Cinema. It is marked by 1970s commercial television – one associates the glimpse of such a ball with sun, free-time, vacation. Marzena Nowak, too, concerns herself with memories in her work. Born in 1977 in Poland, the artist belongs to a generation that still personally experienced the heritage of communism – even when at a distance. “The visualization of emotions and those of that time go hand-in-hand with certain works,” Rainer Fuchs wrote in 2011 about the artistʼs abstract-geometric paintings. The sculpture in the evn collection was created in the same year and is similarly ascertainable. The processing and transformation of lived experience, embodied in certain objects and gestures, is a central theme. A certain ambivalence regarding materiality also plays a role. The seemingly-naturalistic ball is only superficially the copy of a ball. The sculpture is made of steel and the color has been applied in broad brushstrokes. The jumprope, hula hoop, tennis balls and other objects associated with memories, play with contradictory sensory-perception through their material conversion. The conversion transforms a light object into a monumental body that defines its environs. The sculpture has a strong physical presence. The charming plaything becomes a central object in the space as if Marzena Nowak wanted to convey to us that the past can still be experienced and its presence will not be repressed.

Heike Maier-Rieper, 2015 (translation: Virginia Dellenbaugh)