New Acquisitions in the Art Collection of Galeria Bielska BWA

The artists show the contemporary world from different perspectives – historical, political and ecological, as well as exploring the immeasurable reaches of the internet, and looking into experiences of everyday life and the relationship between man and nature.

Agata Smalcerz, curator, excerpt from the Exhibition Guide New Acquisitions in the Art Collection of Galeria Bielska BWA:

“The art collection of Galeria Bielska BWA currently numbers over 1,130 works from various fields of art. The works that have made their way into the collection over the last three years have mainly been donated by artists, or purchased after major group exhibitions, primarily the Painting Biennale Bielska Jesień, and also after solo shows. Some of the works have been purchased by sponsors, being local companies that make financial donations for this purpose – a worthy initiative. Recently, a beautiful work by Edyta Hul found its way into the collection in this way after the artist’s solo exhibition Something’s In the Water, which received the Grand Prix of the 46th Painting Biennale Bielska Jesień 2023. Most of the new acquisitions are paintings, but there are also sculptures, drawings, prints, video installations and photographs by many outstanding artists including: Mariola Brillowska, Urszula Broll, Olaf Brzeski, Ewa Ciepielewska, Olga Dmowska, Jacek Dyga, Bartłomiej Flis, Dariusz Gierdal, Zbigniew Gula, Dora Hara, Edyta Hul, Karolina Jarzębak, Adam Kozicki, Tomasz Kulka, Józek Nowak, duet Memorymorph: Małgorzata Łuczyna i Jacek Złoczowski, Tomasz Ratajczak, Sławomir Rumiak i Kanon Myokoin, Irmina Rusicka, Michał Slezkin, Wilhelm Sasnal, Jacek Świdziński, Ewa Zawadzka and Andrzej Ziółkowski. In addition to works created in Poland, the collection has recently received three paintings by Aboriginal artists Barbara Reid Napangarrdi, Mary Dixon Nungurrayi and Walali Tjapaltjarri.

The works present a picture of the contemporary world from different perspectives, referencing history, politics, ecology, exploring immeasurable reaches of the internet, but also looking into daily experiences of ordinary people and man’s relationship with nature.

The large-scale abstract paintings by Edyta Hul are inspired by lush vegetation, although the artist uses her own original technique rather than faithfully recreating the natural world. The same applies to the work In the Shade by Dora Hara, painted with water colours on silk. Other works feature specific flowers such as the black-and-white lily, a part of the series Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) by Michał Slezkin  and the bulrush and lunaria in Threats of Losing Eco Balance, transformed into objects of creative photography by Sławomir Rumiak and Kanon Myokoin. Flowers and cats are favourite motifs of Dariusz Gierdal, who photographs his immediate urban surroundings, while rural views and farm animals are the inspiration for Aleksander Garncarek’s small-scale paintings. Evenly spaced rows of trees of a single species are a contemporary Forest, photographed by Irmina Rusicka, treated by man solely as a source of timber, so different from a natural forest, full of biodiversity. Cursed Object by Karolina Jarzębak is an object made by the artist from wood, inlaid by her own hands. A magnificent mountain landscape emerges from precisely cut pieces of diverse wood, with snow-capped mountain peaks and a lake with a group of bizarre figures, which normally populate the Internet, floating on its surface.
Untitled by Jacek Dyga, which won an award at the 1994 Painting Biennale Bielska Jesień and has recently been added to the collection, features the natural world being destroyed by man. The simplified landscape, reduced to black lines, parallel or intersecting, is the background of Wilhelm Sasnal’s painting Maus 1 – the first in a series of works by the artist alluding to the famous comic strip by Art Spiegelman, who told the story of his father Władek, an Auschwitz prisoner, in the form of a graphic novel. One of the scenes in the comic bok is set in Bielsko-Biała and is a reference to the history of the city and its Jewish inhabitants, as is the installation TNCBH which comprises a photograph and video projection by the Memorymorph duo Małgorzata Łuczyna and Jacek Złoczowski. The artists documented their interference in the space of the square and the building of Galeria Bielska BWA, where they recreated the outline of the synagogue which stood here in the years 1881-1939. A more recent history, the 1955 World Youth Festival in Warsaw, is referred to in the famous comic strip Festival by Jacek Świdziński, fragments of which were printed on a shirt of his design, prepared for the exhibition Peace.
Religious themes, referring to various beliefs and cults around the world, whether real or invented by artists, can be found in a large batch of works that have recently entered the collection. Urszula Broll, one of the most important Polish artists, who lived between 1930 and 2020, was a Buddhist; her paintings are inspired by the symbols of this religion or are directly titled Mandala. Symbols of the Chinese zodiac appear in the works of Ewa Ciepielewska – one of them is a gouache on paper titled The Year of the Tiger from 2022. Andrzej Ziółkowski presents his visions of various religions coexisting in Southeast Asia in a series of photographs, while Tomasz Kulka’s painting triptych Game Over is a vision of an invented cult in which the deity is a huge human-shaped plant. The paintings of the Aborigines – the original inhabitants of Australia, are artistic recreations of myths about the Ancestors – deities who came from outer space and endowed humans with knowledge. Seemingly abstract paintings, made up of many symbols, are at the same time maps of the land, allowing to find specific points, such as water sources or burial sites.
Human activity, however, is not limited to history and religion, just as modernity is not limited to highly developed civilization featured in Mariola Brillowska’s painting Two Robots in phosphorescent, bright colours, and Ewa Zawadzka’s monochrome On the Edge of Light, symbolizing modern architecture. Civilization has not saved mankind from conflicts, which, along with apparent progress, seem to erupt with increased force. Apocalypse by Michał Slezkin, a series of Postcards by Zbigniew Gula, presenting cities set on fire by protesters (Postcard from Paris) or a painting by Adam Kozicki titled I Wake Up in a Place Where No Man Can Live, refer directly to the problem of migration from the poor South to the rich North. In a less obvious way, the conflicts are alluded to in the paintings by Bartłomiej Flis Wrestling and Titan, Piotr Gromniak The Way of The Empty Hand and Olga Dmowska Amnesia. Olaf Brzeski’s drawing Eye in a Cave features only a small part of an eye, but a tear flowing out of the corner of it suggests that this work, too, is not about joy and peace, but about sadness and despondency.

A note of optimism is evoked by the paintings of Michał Slezkin –  the diptych Night, Almost Morning, composed of impressionistically painted climbing roses (Magnetic Fields) and the figure of a girl blowing smoke (Julia), and the typographic works of Tomek Ratajczak with quotations from literature (“After all, it's clear that clouds are a form of afterlife for steam engines”).

The exhibition closes with Józek Nowak’s Monument to an Anonymous Cultural Worker – a life-size sculpture of a young woman looking boldly though not without fear into the future.”

Agata Smalcerz – art historian and critic, curator of exhibitions, author of tests on contemporary art published in national titles and publications, she has headed Galeria Bielska BWA in Bielsko-Biała since 2004.
The first major presentation of works from the art collection of Galeria Bielska BWA in Sixt’s Villa, handed over to the gallery after extensive modernization in 2020, was the exhibition For Johanne and Anna, which opened on 6 November, 2020, in which Agata Smalcerz referred to the history of the first female residents of the 19th-century villa.

Pictured: Agata Smalcerz, photo by Paweł Sowa

Galeria Bielska BWA, Willa Sixta, Bielsko-Biała, ul. Adama Mickiewicza 24
New Acquisitions in the Art Collection of Galeria Bielska BWA

curated by Agata Smalcerz
24 January – 2 March 2025

Friday, 24 January, 2025 from 12 noon to 6 pm
Exhibition opening, meetings at the collection, talks with viewers and artists

Sunday, 2 March, 2025, at 2 pm
The closing of New Acquisitions in the Art Collection of Galeria Bielska BWA.

Presentation of the latest catalogue of Edyta Hul – the winner of the Grand Prix of the 46th Bielska Autumn Painting Biennale 2023; author of the solo exhibition in Galeria Bielska BWA Coś jest w wodzie/ Something’s in The Water (30 August – 27 October, 2024).

Meeting with the artist and catalogue authors.