Roman Stańczak’s work is subject to strict internal restrictions and is essentially based on ready-made objects and limited to the idea of inversion. Depending on the form and material, objects are literally turned inside out – like a kettle or a bathtub – or stripped of their outer layer. However, in both cases, the sculptural action is carried out radically, so that the object undergoes an ultimate transformation: a chair becomes a sculpture of a chair, a cupboard becomes a sculpture of a cupboard, and so on.

As Jan Verwoert put it in his essay on the artist: “…by virtue of being bare, you would assume, the sculptures [by Stańczak] should have something ‘reductive’ or ‘substractive’ about them. But they don’t. Even if the veneer is gone from the furniture pieces and the coating from the metal, it’s not as though they were missing anything. There is no minus before this equation. Instead, there is a plus. Nothing is taken away. Something is given”.

The artist’s latest work, entitled M.C. (2025), is his first project since the famous Flight – a private jet turned inside out like a glove – presented at the Polish Pavilion in Venice in 2019. The piano stands out among the objects featured in Stańczak’s collection due to its unique aura and dense network of socio-cultural references. This is probably what makes it so difficult to put one’s thoughts together when looking at this sculpture, and it certainly posed an additional challenge in the process of working on it. However, the object itself has undergone the same process as the others – a trip to the other side; nothing has been taken away, something has been added. In the case of a piano over a hundred years old, taken from a nearby music school, this something can be called a new life.