Pracownia Wschodnia is an independent artist collective. We run an artist-run space unique on Warsaw's art map, built on the grassroots initiative of artists working across the visual arts.
Our foundation is two strands of activity. The first is cultural animation: organising events for a wide audience, running a gallery and art courses, publishing. The second is building a workshop base that lets local artists develop their own creative practice.
Pracownia Wschodnia is a non-profit organisation. It would not exist without the commitment and ground-up work of the people who make up the collective. Each of us has our own practice, some of us teach at various universities or work for a range of institutions, but we believe that by joining forces we can achieve more together, both for local culture and in the field of art.
Mikołaj Chylak
Biography
A visual artist.
He runs the Painting and Drawing Studio at the Faculty of Design of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 2018 he held a scholarship from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage. In 2019 he defended his doctoral thesis "Atlas jako zbiór i podróż" [The Atlas as Collection and Journey] at the Faculty of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.
He specialises in painting, as well as drawing and screen printing; he creates visuals for contemporary music concerts and small sculptural forms. In 2012–2014 he co-organised "Wolne loty" [Free Flights], a series of events enabling collaboration between visual artists and musicians. He has shown his works and visuals at, among others, Biuro Wystaw, Galeria Kordegarda, Galeria Promocyjna, the Polish Institute (in Berlin and Leipzig), the Podlasie Philharmonic, the Szczecin Philharmonic, Teatr Nowy, the Jewish Historical Institute, the POLIN Museum, the Warsaw Rising Museum, the Zofia and Wacław Nałkowski Museum and the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. In 2022, together with the Ukrainian artist Lesia Khomenko, he created a work presented in the urban space of Berlin (as part of the IAM project "Zabójstwo do przyjęcia" [An Acceptable Murder]) and at the Artsvit gallery (Dnipro).
In his artistic work he examines the European idea of civilisation, its inconsistencies and poetry, as well as the violence inherent in it. The artist draws inspiration from press photographs, art history and film stills. On their basis he builds the complex iconography of his works.