Marcin Rusak Studio

Marcin Rusak is a Polish designer based in London, whose work explores the themes of consumption, transience, aging, decay and longevity. For very personal reasons, he decided to work with colors in different ways. I recently met him in his new Studio, where he told me about his story, his process and his creativity.

Tell us how you came to this kind of work with flowers.

It was a real adventure for me to attend the Royal College of art. I started studying Europe, I did not like it, I did interior design on the side and tried to attend an art school in Poland. I was not accepted. So I tried at the Academy of Design in Eindhoven, a school of concept design, without even knowing what concept design is. I had to be here for four years, but after two years I felt that I wanted to do more and that Dutch education works in such a way that they wipe their heads and inject them with their tools, and after four years they can only use these tools. After years of studying, I knew I wanted something bigger. I wanted freedom, that's where RCA appeared.

In RCA you have the incredible ability to constantly make mistakes and find your own stuff. So I found my article in an accident because it was short to find an article that interested you, whether from the past or elsewhere, just something you like.

And I found this locker that we had in my family home, which dates back to the 17th century. It is a Dutch cabinet carved from wood and the entire sculptural decoration is inspired by nature and the seasons. So I started exploring why I like it ?’. So the first natural step for me was to explore nature and flowers - the themes of the sculptures-and I went to the flower market for the first time. And then I started to see all this garbage. And since I was always interested in lawsuits, I took the trash and started doing everything I could to go somewhere without knowing where it was going. And I discovered the print with flowers.

There is a Video on their Website where they make one of these fabrics. What Liquid did you spray with flowers?

Vinegar. It helps to reveal natural pigments in colors and also helps you to penetrate the Silk. I also use special bristles specially designed for digital printing, as they are treated with substances that react with ink, and although the floral pigments are not Ink, The Silk reacts in the same way and the pigments quickly become lighter. When I first tried regular silk, the color lasted only about a month. These pieces are about a year old and they haven't really disappeared that much, but they will eventually disappear, even if they never completely disappear. I always have everything I have done because it is very difficult to sell things that are not eternal, but people have started to understand me better now and they are willing to buy the idea with the object. In addition, recording the process of creating the song becomes a part of the song itself.

At the end of the project, I went to a Tutor and said, "You know what? It's really fun that I do these things with flowers now because I have a 100-year history of flowering in my family.’

When I was born, the shop was closed, so maybe it was closed two or three years after my birth. So, until I was 26 years old and at RCA I had nothing to do with colors.

I grew up in these abandoned greenhouses. That was my Playground. It was fabulous. I still remember the very dry heat they had in the greenhouse, but there was nothing else, just these pipes from everywhere and all these steel structures, but no colors or natural materials. We moved when I was 10 years old. My mother always loved flowers and always wanted to do something with them, but never did.

The flowers did not belong to the family, they were in our incredible history because my grandfather and his father have been growing flowers for over a hundred years. They also had florists, so they had a very big business, they mainly grew orchids. And my grandfather was a strange scientist, so he was really bad for people, but he was great for plants. The discovery was a breakthrough for me, but it was also quite natural. Although I kill plants, I use dead plants, or create objects that die!

But that made me think. I remember that conversation in RCA with one of the tutors, they asked, " why are you doing this ? It is good that this textile extends the life of dead flowers for months or years, so it is great, but what is this business ? Think about it. Why?’

So I started doing a lot more research in the Netherlands and understanding why people are so much into flowers nowadays and how flowers have become a commodity and how they are sold to Tesco and grown in Kenya and fly on planes and use water in places without water. Everything that people do not know about the commercial cultivation of flowers. And then I started to explain to people that it was a bit like the food industry, which started to change 10 years ago when we started to become aware of how we get food and grow intensively etc. so I established a connection with Wageningen University and the research centre in the Netherlands, next to a huge flower market. And I wrote a book about it.