We are a group of friends connected with the Pracownia Wschodnia Association. Until now it has provided us with a space for creative work. After moving to a new place – plac Hallera – we gave up a place to work in favour of a place to exhibit. We created the Pracownia Wschodnia gallery so that, acting from the grassroots and outside institutions, we could not only share our own work but also give artists from outside our circle a chance to exhibit. The gallery, like the whole association, is funded from the private budgets of the members of Pracownia Wschodnia.

Lautrec's circus is over. Lautrec died, so did Schiele. What a sense of humour. I suppose you don't have to prove anything, healthy man. But the awareness of error (Stańko), what an awareness that is. Chylak (curator B) asked me what all the people I paint have in common. Maybe they were ill? I have never managed to paint anyone ill. But I will keep trying. Cieślak, on the other hand (A): we have to do this joint exhibition. But coming back to The Death of Lautrec, I suppose it's all the same.

Some queen or other has died. I do it clumsily, but I describe a human being. And more seriously still, I'm going to die soon anyway. The rest is the curators' fault. They chose the paintings and told me to write this text.

Long live Frank O’Hara.

We invite everyone thirsty for travel on a summer transfer from plac Hallera to wintry Antarctica.

Opening 15 July 2022, 19:00

All events are free and open to everyone.

Organisers: Pracownia Wschodnia Association and MOVIDA

Patronage: Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Polish Polar Consortium, Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Notes na 6 Tygodni

Co-funded by the Polish History Museum in Warsaw as part of the "Patriotyzm Jutra" programme

Good morning, could you spare 5 minutes to talk about the soul?

At Galeria Wschodnia Raphael Rogiński will present himself from many sides. He will turn into something the Dacians called a polyfigure. Dispensing the efflorescences of his soul to the world, on 8 and 9 June he will tell of the world not only musically but also graphically. Watercolours, gouaches, drawings and short films are here a kind of tracing paper reflecting a history in which the artist is an observer, a part or a creator. Mutants and hermaphrodites live here alongside Holocaust survivors, the beloved Black Sea, bound up with family, breaks through into newly built Warsaw (which the author of the works tours with ghost people), and the animal of Seth meets polar powers.

Macabre art is no stranger to the author. The cosmopolitan surrealism which Rogiński professes in the visual arts, and to which he has clung like a vestal since the age of 10, has more than once got the artist into trouble. Forged in the smithy as an artist since childhood, he decided to give himself over to elusive music. Banished from art schools amid the odours of scandal and indecency, he became a minstrel to delight courtiers, the peoples of the polis and the rabble of this world. Now he returns and combines media in endless wonder at the world. The exhibition, with a concert and a guided tour, will be a unity flowing from itself, like a little shrine of snake-people by a magic spring.

All my life I was careful. Of bacteria lurking in warm cream, cold water, a brain tumour and ice cream. I was paralysed by the fear of paralysis of the lower body. But I kept due caution, thanks to which I avoided many terrifying dangers. Including the worst one: life. It lay in wait for me in the light of a smashed street lamp, a rotten tree frozen in the shape of a deer and the place where mice are born from potatoes. It was unequivocally trying to catch up with me. It leered at me with a burning eye. It stood no chance: I crawled in the dark. Silently and imperceptibly. My strength came from the spirit whose essence I have tried to show in this exhibition.

In the noise and chaos of the world around us we have forgotten what truly feeds and nourishes us. Nor do we remember that we still have unlimited access to these resources through our inner selves. To find this place, it is enough to stop and BE. It is a space in which only silence can be heard.. and "at a certain moment images begin to emerge from this silence.." They can be seen at Iwona Zawadzka's exhibition "Linia ciągła" [Continuous Line].

A group exhibition of the Warsaw gallery and screen printing studio V9.

The presentation has no particular premise or theme; it is meant to be a showcase of many different aesthetics, ideas and points of view, and to give the chance to see works usually seen on a larger or smaller screen.

For years we have been talking and looking at each other's paintings. The joint exhibition we planned has come at a moment when events in Ukraine are shattering the belief that the world around us is safe, comprehensible and tamed. In this situation we return to what may have been of key importance for the painting of each of us – childhood. To a world which, contrary to received opinion, did not seem safe to either of us then either. As if we had found some old key to what we share. A child who draws does not speak; it gives itself over to half-magical rituals, tames the world it lives in. The pictures grow with it and speak their own mysterious language. That was, and has remained, our way of life. In the face of certain events, what can be said loses its meaning. We want to share a childhood ritual which, in order to tame the world, reaches for means other than what we can grasp, write, say and discuss. The words of commentary are closer to an attempt at interpreting dreams or describing plants. If anything can matter here, it is not discursive content but experience, which connects not so much painter and viewer as people with similar needs – to be at home in a shared world.

"The dirt fell away, I didn't want to let go, and everything flashed before my eyes. We went all the way to the end."

Stefan Kornacki : prints, drawings, video, poetry, installation.

Curator/ coach : Mariusz Waras

exhibition design: Tomasz Świetlik

performance : Ewa

concert: STOP

music: Kudłak, Michał Bryndal, Cezary Ostrowski, Homo Faber, Tomasz Januchta, Jerzy Wołowicz.

collaboration: Kwiaciarnia Grafiki, Kolektyw Pogoda