Marcin Rusak, born in Poland, has dedicated her career to exploring decomposition and preservation, a line of research that stems from her family's background in the flower business.
Based on this, he carries out an immersive experience with his furniture and objects that shone in the Design Week de Milan this year, as well as in the Curio Design de Miami.
These creations represent an evolution of his nature-based practice, which features flowers embedded in slabs of resin, a material he developed that appears throughout his work.
"With most of the work we do, it's not about the outcome," he says, "rather, we're interested in the evolution of ideas and the progress of materials.
Marcin Rusak. Source: KASIA BIELSKA
It is in this way that he creates the resulting meticulously crafted cabinets, chairs, and patinated vessels that speak to his experimentation with temporary substances.
Sometimes decadence is expressed in a perishable vase; other times, it's a cabinet that ages at its own slow pace.
One of his lasting memories from his childhood in Poland was spending time in his family's greenhouses. Her maternal great-grandfather and grandfather were flower growers in Warsaw, and though his business closed just before he was born, he often played in those overgrown, abandoned glass structures. “I can still feel the heat and smell the weeds and bacteria that grow there,” he recalls, details that are undeniably visible in his work.
So it's fitting that the 34-year-old has built an international following for furniture and objects. that incorporate flowers and plants in unexpected ways.
Since establishing his studio in London Five years ago, he expanded on these ideas, most notably with the resin flower furniture for which he is now best known. His tables, cabinets and tapestries Flora, usually made with minimalist metal bases and frames, feature surfaces with dried flowers, leaves and stems, all encased in semi-translucent resin and intuitively composed in a style reminiscent of Dutch still lifes or lacquerware. Asia Oriental.
Then there are her sculptures, which, similar to furniture, are created with thin cross-sectional slabs of resin infused with flowers that resemble vividly speckled stone.
To do this, Rusak cuts the segments in black or milky white resin, in interlocking parts using a CNC milling machine, which leaves parts of the raw plant exposed. "In a sense, the piece is alive," he says. "And I want it to stay that way."
Duality is at the heart of his practice, particularly with what he calls his perishable pots, formed from a mixture of tree resin, shellac, beeswax, plants, flowers, and cooking flour that is heated and pressed into molds.
With their archaic, almost haunting beauty, their unique objects are bound to degrade, warp, and collapse over time.
It is this mix, of science and beauty, poetry and personal history, that defines Rusak's work and gives it depth. In the XNUMXth century, Dutch flower paintings not only demonstrated an artist's virtuosic skill, but reminded viewers of his own mortality. Today, Rusak's floral furniture teaches similar lessons. “What I love about this job is that it's never the same and there's no limit,” he says. "It is an infinity pool to discover”.