The artistic and research programme „SPOTKANIE” [ENCOUNTER], run at the Pracownia Wschodnia Gallery in the first half of 2026, focuses on analysing and practically testing the notion of encounter in a social and artistic context. The project is carried out through a series of events comprising exhibitions, performative actions, open meetings and workshops, whose common element is direct contact, co-presence and the exchange of experience. The programme is addressed above all to people who rarely make use of what contemporary art has to offer, because of formal barriers or the sense of distance that often accompanies contact with its institutional forms.

The programme's activities respond to the deepening phenomena of isolation, loneliness and gradual withdrawal from social relationships, as well as to the shortage of open and safe spaces that function outside the mechanisms of competition. The initiative focuses on creating an attentive, non-hierarchical environment in which both active collaboration and passive presence are possible. Participation involves no assessment of competence and no obligation to declare a particular level of engagement, leaving room for an individual pace.

PROGRAMME

Three activities will be carried out within the artistic and research programme „SPOTKANIE”:

1. „Niewystarczalnicy” [The Insufficient Ones] / 21 March – 12 April

An exhibition by Antek Lisowski and Janek Cieślak reflecting on the contemporary experience of masculinity, shaped by the pressure of agency and self-sufficiency. By revealing experiences of failure, fatigue and fragility, the project opens a space for dialogue around subjects usually pushed out of public life. Reflection on masculinity becomes a tool of encounter here – it makes it possible to overcome isolation, break out of stereotypical roles and create the conditions for an honest conversation about shared experiences.

Curator: Małgorzata Popek

2. „Jak zrobić stół?” [How to Make a Table?] / 15 May – 17 June

A group exhibition and series of artistic actions examining the table as a material and symbolic space of encounter. The project treats the table as a place of conversation, negotiation, collaboration and conflict, and also as a space for sharing experience, story and presence. Starting from a simple, everyday motif, the exhibition explores the communal potential of being together and alternative, non-hierarchical forms of encounter.

Participants in the exhibition:

Mykola Bilyk, Mikołaj Chylak, Adam Durjasz, Olha Hurenko, Mateusz Możejko, Iwona Mysera, Paweł Mysera, Hubert Ostrowski, Jędrzej Owsiński, Ada Adu Rączka, Patryk Różycki.

Exhibition supervisors: Mikołaj Chylak, Hubert Ostrowski, Jędrzej Owsiński.

Accompanying events: 

17 May / SEWING STRETCHERS FOR UKRAINE 

23 May / MAKING PIEROGI FOR FOOD NOT BOMBS

3. „A series of meetings with a painter” / 13 and 14 June

Studio visits to the painting studio of Monika Misztal, a neighbour of Pracownia Wschodnia, whose artistic practice develops in the direct local context of Praga-Północ. The meetings take the form of an honest conversation about the artist's individual working method, the relationship between everyday life and creative practice, and the functioning of a painting studio as a space of work, thought and experiment.

The project is co-funded by the City of Warsaw.