(manuscript, Kraków 1996. The text was published in the exhibition catalog: Maria Pinińska-Bereś 1931-1999, Bunkier Sztuki Gallery, Kraków 1999)

A strange way led me from the method of sculpture, through the cycle Corsets of materials and paper stuck with glue, to the appearance of “Piece of Furniture”.

In 1968 I did several works using a wooden work top, gray canvas and drawing (cover pictures). A similar board was used by me in the work entitled Table II — The Feast, today in the National Museum in Radom. “Feast” was initially presented as a standing table. Later I presented the work as a work surface of a table. In the presentation of this work evident are the features of treating a woman as a thing, who appears as dishes for consumption. The second table I’m Sexy arose in 1969 and was exhibited as a table standing in the centre of the exhibition hall. Equally in this work the problem of women’s treatment as objects is observable. The work refers to the Easter table with a banner (ram) with I’m Sexy. On the table laid “with a female dish” one can see the outline of the “consumer’s” hands. The work is to be found in Arturo Schwarz’s collection in Milan.

Further the whole wave of “Psycho Furniture” as I chose to call it. As opposed to the severity of the first tables, the cupboards The Pink Mirror, Little Pink Table, like also Love Machine, are really perfect objects, equally in their perfection as in their beauty. Totally covered in acrylic, white with pink in its various gradations. These works were located both in Arturo Schwarz’s collections and in the National Museum in Wrocław. They were made of plywood and elements of paper primed with glue covered in acrylic paint.

The next stage required the replacement of forms from paper ± glue with a form less connected with the body, with a form sewn from pink cushion linen, stuffed and shaped. In the early 1970s there arose: Screen (Good for Everything), the chair Scream, Erotic Swaddle (already with the use of a sponge), the important work My Enchanted Room, the property of the National Museum in Cracow. Pieces of furniture continue to be created e.g. Beds, even though a new interest in space has arrived.

I arranged the pieces of furniture initially singularly, later I made a certain compatibility and arrangement with them which led me to works annexing spaces and playing out the galley such as Well of Pink or Stream. Equally various works of the installation type, often based on fact created through performance, e.g. Letter-Kite, Transfer through a Quilt or Banner.

Echoes of the pieces of furniture are present in the 1980s. For example works such as The End of the Feast (1982) being the destruction of the table, Injured Boat or My Bed on the Island (National Museum in Wrocław).

In searching for new ways of expression and a new discipline in form I have moved far from existing sculpture.

Cracow, 1996

Translated by “Inter-text Translation”