At the heart of his practice lies a relentless spirit of experimentation. His Warsaw-based studio operates as a laboratory where botany meets craftsmanship, and scientific inquiry fuels artistic expression. Whether embedding leaves into resin, turning flowers into ash and then encasing them in glass, oxidizing metal surfaces, or designing objects that evolve over time, Rusak embraces nature’s cycles as both a concept and a medium. His hybrid approach—merging traditional crafts, industrial techniques, and digital fabrication—results in one-of-a-kind pieces that blur the boundaries between art, design, and material research.

Rusak's vision extends to larger explorations of space and experience. His Swidno Foundation, housed in a once-abandoned 18^th century villa an hour’s drive from Warsaw, serves as a site for artistic experimentation and ecological reflection, reinforcing his commitment to sustainability and material storytelling. Yatzer recently caught up with Rusak to talk about his ever-evolving body of work, the challenges of material innovation and his return to Milan Design Week after a three-year hiatus.

Answers have been condensed and edited for clarity.

Where did your fascination with the natural world originate, and how has it shaped your evolution as an artist and designer?

It all boils down to rediscovering my heritage whilst studying at the RCA in London. When a tutor asked me to think of a piece that struck an emotional cord, I immediately thought of the giant, carved baroque wardrobe, or Danziger Schapp, that belonged to my grandfather. As a flower grower, he committed himself entirely to breeding new species: he would sleep all day and work at night, following the vital cycles of the flowers. I tried to retrace his fascination, wandering around the famous London flower markets after hours, collecting dead plants that went unsold and experimenting with them in the studio. I started asking myself: what is it that compels us to manipulate nature? And why are we so fascinated with plants to the point that we immortalise them in our creations? This led me to explore the cut flower market further, and how it worked behind-the-scenes. After all, flowers are highly manipulated commodities that we either buy out of vanity, or to fulfil our needs for sensual pleasure, status, style… etc.

On the other hand, there is the wilderness that has attracted me ever since I was a little boy wandering around my grandfather’s glasshouses which, by the time I was an adolescent, had been closed down, lay derelict and abandoned, overgrown with weeds. This self-replicating system of growth and decay which is both hostile and extremely appealing is something I find solace and inspiration in.

Your work explores the tension between permanence and impermanence, preservation and decay. How do you translate these themes when it comes to choosing materials or deciding which artistic process you’re going to adopt?

I am fascinated by nature’s ability to resurrect: it is the constant cycle of creation and decay that I try to recreate and observe within the materials I develop in the studio. You might not know it, but the most successful material I invented, the Flora Temporaria, which I’ve used in my functional pieces, started off as a way to encapsulate the slow decay of plants within a more stable and unchanging material, i.e. resin. I imagined injecting bacteria that would slowly consume the plants within the material, leaving silvery voids filled with sunlight. This changed entirely when I experimented with adding pigment to the mixture, achieving a material that is as decorative as it is symbolic.

I also like to think that through my work I educate the audience to invest more care and attention into the pieces they surround themselves with. For instance, the Perishable Series, made with waste flowers and shellac and often reinterpreting archetypal collectable items such as vases, are totally stable in a controlled environment, but when you expose them to excess sunlight or moisture, they morph, and potentially collapse or disintegrate. It is up to their owner, or custodian, to decide which direction to pursue.

Your studio is often described as a laboratory. How do you approach material innovation, and what challenges go hand in hand with developing unique techniques in-house?

I’m constantly exploring new ways to engage with materials, especially those rooted in the natural world. I try to keep an open mind, observing the environment around me, and working closely with my entire team which consists of material specialists, engineers, and humanities majors. Trying out a new material involves not only hands-on manipulation, but also broader research into the cultural or economic aspects of it. This is true, for instance, regarding the recent research we did on amber and tree resins.

We learned, amongst other things, that resin sourcing was an important part of the Polish economy up until the early 1990s, and, perhaps counterintuitively, it helped prevent deforestation which is now affecting the country. Now, with the rise of synthetic alternatives, resin-derived materials such as colophony have mostly been forgotten, and are presently used only in small economic niches. I believe artists and designers highlighting those broad contexts may lead to a rethinking of the strategies that were abandoned in the past.

Your work bridges traditional craft, industrial manufacturing, and digital fabrication. What drew you to this hybrid approach, and how do these methods shape your creations?

I tend to not differentiate between these categories, to be honest. I treat these methods as a broad palette of possibilities that I make use of freely. Digital fabrication may be as time- and labour-consuming as traditional crafts, or even more so. With the Ghort Orchid project, for instance, we started by 3D-scanning real orchid flowers, and later elaborated their shapes in the digital environment, which took many hours of actual manual labour, pixel by pixel, bit by bit. After they were 3D printed in a weeks-long process, I manually altered the surface of each sculpture, achieving an intriguing effect that suggests visual decomposition. Once the process is kickstarted, I know exactly what to do and which techniques or methods to apply.

What inspired the creation of the Swidno Foundation, and what drew you to the abandoned villa that now serves as its home?

The villa offers a unique environment for me to observe the lifecycle of my works, and how they interact with both historic architecture and overwhelming nature. In a broader perspective, the foundation will allow me to give back to society, bridging the local with the global, art and science, traditional craft and technological innovation. Although we’re not yet established formally yet, Swidno already functions as a meeting place where we invite internationally acclaimed design professionals, collectors and curators to discover Poland through our unique lens.

After a three-year hiatus, you returned to Milan Design Week with "Ghost Orchid", a new series of light sculptures presented at Alcova Milano. What inspired this project, and what materials and processes did you employ?

The project began as a tribute to my grandfather, who cultivated orchids. In it, I try to inhabit the mindset of a “mad scientist,” replicating the multistep cultivation process through digital means as a way of reconnecting the past with the future. The abstract forms of the sculptures are based on real flowers that we scan in the studio and later manipulate digitally—guided by the same questions I imagine my grandfather might have asked himself: What qualities of the flower am I looking for? Is this the form that I want to bring to life? And if so, which material/means should I use for that?

The first Ghost Orchid sculpture was “planted” last year at Maison Bernard in the south of France, thanks to an invitation from the Genius Loci Foundation. The presentation in Milan, which we staged in collaboration with light director Jacqueline Sobiszewski, engages with the spirit of the place, the Serre di Pasino, a complex of abandoned glasshouses which were once famous for cultivating white orchids.