Józefa Wnukowa / Zula Strzelecka / Karolina Balcer / Irmina Staś
„I Invented Nothing.”
Curator: Karolina Połom
24.04.2026 — 14.06.2026
Exhibition opening: 24.04.2026 / 19:00
„I would like him to believe that this world truly exists, I invented nothing.”
— Józefa Wnukowa
According to Professor Józefa Wnukowa, the term “Sopot School” did not refer solely to the name of the institution established in 1945 in Sopot or to an artistic movement; for her, it described an artistic attitude. A shared characteristic that distinguished the members of the group was a personal and emotional relationship with reality. In 1950, Zula Strzelecka graduated from the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Sopot, specializing in textiles and painting. Throughout her life, Strzelecka named Prof. Wnukowa among the most important influences on her work.
Both artists created artistic textiles, tapestries, paintings, and in the case of Zula Strzelecka — Słuck sashes. In their practices, they referred to the tradition of ornament and regional heritage. They participated in the reconstruction of Gdańsk, working on frescoes, mosaics, and decorative façades of tenement houses. They worked with craft, and their art was embedded in a socio-cultural context. For Wnukowa and Strzelecka, textiles often had a decorative and functional dimension; they used ornament and cultivated traditional craftsmanship. However, within their artistic legacy, one can also notice emerging personal motifs, with nature and animals repeatedly becoming important elements of their work.
Karolina Balcer and Irmina Staś also use traditional textiles in their practices, employing them to reinterpret contemporary motifs. In their work, textiles appear as part of installations; Balcer and Staś adapt and transform this traditional medium, addressing difficult themes. They refer to family relations, interpersonal and interspecies relationships, identity and blood ties, the space between life and death, and the commercialization of art.
The exhibition examines social, historical, and cultural influences. Starting from the legacy of the Sopot School and Józefa Wnukowa, it shows the significance of textile in the contemporary world. Zula Strzelecka becomes here a bridge between an earlier discipline and contemporary freedom of working with material. Different generations intertwine — partly by chance, partly through a shared sensitivity to matter and perception. The exhibition does not construct a rigid genealogy; instead, it observes how the medium of textile is able to survive shifts in artistic language. “I Invented Nothing.” marks the moment in which textile ceases to be “craft” and becomes a work of art. In the background, the spirit of Sopot remains present: a pioneering school that left a surprisingly wide trace in thinking about material and form. The confrontation with contemporary artists Irmina Staś and Karolina Balcer, who use textiles in conceptual art as a critical medium, becomes an important context of the exhibition.
The exhibition „I Invented Nothing.” is part of the project Miękki zapis — historie tkanin co-financed by the City of Sopot.
The exhibition will present paintings and textile works.
Anna Bem-Borucka / Krzysztof Gliszczyński / Edyta Kowalewska / Michał Wirtel
”DIALOGUES”
Curator: Małgorzata Popinigis
14.11.2025 — 04.01.2026
Exhibition opening: 14.11.2025
Splot Gallery is pleased to present works by Anna Bem-Borucka, Krzysztof Gliszczyński, Edyta Kowalewska, and Michał Wirtel. The works presented in the exhibition DIALOGUES are united by a simplified form — either entirely abstract (Bem-Borucka, Gliszczyński) or balancing on the boundary between abstraction and figuration (Kowalewska, Wirtel). Even if we recognize a specific object depicted in a painting, it is difficult to resist the impression that something entirely different is, in fact, the true subject of the given representation.
Although the artists come from different generations, what they share is a striving to bring forth the most primal, archetypal states — fragments of our shared, intergenerational experience. These experiences, elusive to verbal description yet recognizable through the form given by the artists, touch upon existential questions: transience, fulfillment, or spiritual presence. The works, arranged in individual rooms of the gallery, enter into formal and thematic dialogues with one another. They also invite the viewer to contemplate the space between figuration and abstraction, between geometry and the organic nature of form, or between emptiness and meaning.
Krzysztof Gliszczyński
”Pneuma”
Curator: Karolina Kliszewska
17.10.2025 — 02.11.2025
Exhibition opening: 17.10.2025 / 21:00
he exhibition “Pneuma” was an attempt to create a space for reflection around the philosophical concept of pneuma — an invisible yet perceptible substance that permeates both mind and body. This inseparable relationship between matter and spirit, known since the time of the Stoics, is an inspiring phenomenon that reveals the multidimensional nature of the human being. The spirit of imagination — Spiritus phantasticus — is the force that moves the senses, allowing one to explore, both rationally and irrationally, states of existence and cognitive processes between the body and its surroundings.
“In my artistic practice, the awareness of the body builds a close relationship between the picture plane, the working process, and the object. The object presented in the exhibition, ‘Hold your breath for a moment, stop the thought’, captures a moment in the painting process that is usually invisible to the viewer. I wanted to preserve this intriguing moment — I created a three-dimensional object so that one could observe what typically happens during the painting process and then disappears irreversibly. In this case, what is inside makes visible what is outside. Like inhalation and exhalation, which allow us to exist in the world.”
— Krzysztof Gliszczyński
Diana Lelonek
”Solarstalgia”
Curator: Agnieszka Rayzacher
06.09.2025 — 22.09.2025
Exhibition opening: 06.09 / 20:00
the exhibition is part of the Frames of Sopot Photography Festival held under the patronage of the City of Sopot and State Art Gallery in Sopot
The exhibition by Diana Lelonek is connected with a return to her roots —photography, which she studied at UAP in Poznań. The artist also turns to the very beginnings of this field, employing early photographic techniques such as solarigraphy, cyanotype, and anthotype. The objects created in this way are unique — no two prints can be identical. The works are produced in close relationship with nature, which has been at the center of her artistic practice for years.
The title of the exhibition, “Solastalgia”, directs us toward the sun as a (once) essential factor in the process of image-making. It also draws from the term referring to the melancholy caused by climate catastrophe. In order to create the solarigraphs, later printed using the cyanotype technique, Diana Lelonek first had to travel to the mountains. Her destination was a shepherd’s hut located on an alpine meadow. In early spring, the artist, together with her partner, set out for the Alps, taking turns carrying a large box on their backs —a camera obscura containing photosensitive paper. For two months, sunlight entering through a small aperture traced its path against the backdrop of monumental peaks. The result was a negative in which the sun literally burned its own trace.
Michał Adamski
“When Water Covers the Earth”
Curator: Paweł Klein
06.09.2025 — 22.09.2025
Exhibition opening: 06.09 / 20:00
the exhibition is part of the Frames of Sopot Photography Festival held under the patronage of the City of Sopot and State Art Gallery in Sopot
Michał Adamski’s exhibition “When Water Covers the Earth” engages in a dialogue between the past and the future, linking two eras through its narrative — the historical agricultural landscape and the contemporary economy, with its vision of shaping systems that restore balance and biodiversity. The artist constructs this story by observing the functioning of a modern, specific farm within a kind of dualism: agriculture contributes to climate change while at the same time being particularly vulnerable to its effects, such as droughts, high temperatures, intense rainfall, or floods.
Just as in industrial food production an appropriate combination of technologies is both crucial and unavoidable, in Michał Adamski’s project a compilation of infrared imaging techniques takes on the role of a “detector of reality.” In photography, infrared determines such transformations of color that green is perceived as red.
Michał Wirtel
”Transitions”
Curator: Mariola Balińska
16.05.2025 — 27.07.2025
Exhibition opening: 16.05 / 20:00
The exhibition “Transitions” presents the latest paintings by Michał Wirtel, in which the artist combines personal experiences with universal questions about spirituality and the presence of the sacred in the contemporary world. “Passages” shows how, in a world full of tensions and crises, one can find a personal refuge. Art becomes not only a form of comfort and contemplation, but also a space for reflection on contemporaneity.
The diversity of creative attitudes toward the world reveals possible directions of interpretation and action. The artist’s choice is clear — it is a search for solace in painting, in a creative process focused on spirituality, harmony, and empathy.
North Goes South
– Waste We Didn’t Create
by THE REVIVAL (led by Yayra Agbofah)
opening 6th September 2024 / 21:30
curated by: Ula Kahul, Małgorzata Popinigis
6 September – 13 October 2024
the exhibition is part of the Frames of Sopot Photography Festival held under the patronage of the City of Sopot and State Art Gallery in Sopot
The title of the exhibition “North goes South - waste we didn’t create” plays on the double meaning of the expression “to go south,” which means moving in a southern direction but also “to deteriorate/decline”.
It also aims to challenge the main theme of this year’s Photography Festival in Sopot, – North, as the show is a part of festival’s celebratory 10th edition programme.
Here, “north" refers to the geographical, economic and cultural Global North, and its negative impact on the Global South, with an emphasis on the waste colonialism, unsustainable global textile industry in the era of fast fashion, and resulting environmental crisis.
The exhibition presents the works of THE REVIVAL, a collective and community-run organization of activists/artists from Ghana, led by Yayra Agbofah, as an example of vibrant, impactful movements in Africa of today that challenge the status quo, question the values and economic systems of the Global North, and redefine the notions of sustainability and human connection to nature. Through upcycled fashion, community projects, art, and the powerful language of photography, THE REVIVAL inspires and offers solutions and hope in times of crisis, calling for action and stimulating global social change.
