On March 30 the gal­lery will be closed

WARSAW GAL­LERY WEEK­END 2023

Janek Simon
SIXTEENTH WORLD

The work of Janek Simon grows out of experien­ces of travel between diverse cul­tures, economies and visions of the future, which the artist com­bines using innovative digital tools and DIY practice. The sculp­ture series “Meta Folklore”, executed over the past two years, is an artistic, tech­nological and political fantasy—a vision of a new, univer­sal art created using artificial intel­ligence fed by a database of thousands of non-​academic sculp­tures from all over the world.

WARSAW GAL­LERY WEEK­END 2023

Oskar Zięta
COURTYARD SCULPTURES

Oskar Zięta’s design prac­tice derives from a moder­nistic ethos of innovation and tech­nology which drives aesthetics. The point of depar­ture for the project prepared especially for the Raster Sculp­ture Garden is the figure of the rug-​beating frame typically found in the cour­tyard of a housing com­plex, from which the artist explores a sur­prising space between func­tional garden fur­niture and an abs­tract, futuristic spatial forms.

EXHIBITIONS 2023

Alicja Pakosz
VORTICES

The first individual show at Raster by Alicja Pakosz (born 1996) is a nar­rative woven around the figure of a toxic landscape—obsessively retur­ning as a clas­sic motif from the history of pain­ting and also a vision evoking fear, an under­lying anxiety. An image appearing in the least expec­ted moment like hal­lucinations pres­sing under the eyelids. Something morbid and not entirely benign. The artist plays out this story like film frames in a series of pain­tings in two dif­ferent scales and a fully-​formed diorama.

EXHIBITIONS 2023

Zofia Rydet
ENDLESSLY DISTANT ROADS

Zofia Rydet (1911–1997), creator of the iconic Sociological Record and the fan­tastic World of Feelings and Imagination, was an artist gifted with a sense for observing the entropy of the world around her. This excep­tional photographic per­spec­tive is revealed in all its power in the series Endles­sly Distant Roads, executed in 1980. In the exhibition at Raster, we present a selec­tion of 40 photographs from this unusual and rarely shown collection.

2019 exhibitions

Rafał Bujnowski, Peter Puklus, Zofia Rydet
1000 HANDS

Metaphorically and seasonally, the exhibition 1000 Hands suits the climate of the pre-​spring thaw, illuminating a land­scape of exhaustion and approaching, intuitively sensed change. In Polish literature this metaphor car­ries a political dimen­sion. In the works shown together here by Rafał Buj­now­ski (1974–), Peter Puklus (1980–) and Zofia Rydet (1911–1997), what is vital is the very process of trans­for­mation, and the accom­panying ambivalence, the tem­perature of inter­per­sonal relations and the poten­tial of the human hands from the title.

warsaw gal­lery week­end 2018

If I Were the Moon

The post-​romantic figure of the drun­ken artist is fading into the past, leaving behind a land­scape lit­tered with hal­lucinations, depravity, and shat­tered illusions. This is the story of the intimate ties between con­tem­porary art and vodka. Con­ceived as a medley of artworks and documen­tary con­tent, the exhibition features Krzysztof M. Bed­nar­ski, Olaf Brzeski, Michał Budny, Rafał Buj­now­ski, Oskar Dawicki, Edward Dwur­nik, Władysław Hasior, Jerzy Lewczyński, Honorata Martin, Dominika Olszowy, Zbigniew Rogal­ski, Wil­helm Sasnal, and others.

2018 exhibitions

Nobuyoshi Araki, Aneta Grzeszykowska, Eva Koťátková
FOREIGN BODIES

Contemporary visual cul­ture treats the body as a plastic material that can be formed, shaped, distor­ted and defor­med as needed or desired. The images gathered for our exhibition are a special col­lec­tion of such bodies sub­jec­ted to various treat­ments and forms of sub­duing and con­trol­ling the body.
The cosmetic masks photographed by Grzeszykow­ska effec­tively reshape the artist’s face. The school les­sons in anatomy in Koťátková’s col­lages results in decon­struc­tion of the holistic unity of body and psyche. Araki’s nudes fran­kly address sexual prac­tices groun­ded in domination.

2018 exhibitions

Friend of a Friend

“Friend of a Friend” is a con­cept based on the prin­ciple of frien­dly col­laboration between con­tem­porary art gal­leries. It puts together Warsaw-​based spaces as hosts with inter­national guests, and thus aims to establish an alter­native plat­form for com­mer­cial gal­leries to present con­tem­porary art. The group exhibition prepared at Raster will inc­lude works by Breyer P-Orridge (1950, UK) from Zurich’s Galerie Bern­hard, Andrea Kvas (1986, IT) and Nick Bastis (1985, US) from Vienna’s Ermes-​Ermes gal­lery, as well as Olaf Brzeski. 

2018 exhibition

Przemek Matecki
SMALL PAINTINGS

In his latest series of pain­tings, which he worked on non­stop for the past year or more, Matecki takes on the vast­ness of art. A tan­gible symbol of its fecun­dity is the heavy piles of super­fluous exhibition catalogs and art magazines which the artist brow­ses through in search of inspiring material for his own work. Matecki gives new life to reproduc­tions, trans­for­ming them into sharp, witty miniature oil pain­tings. The treat­ments he applies generate sur­prising effects. Here art is sub­mit­ted to an authorial com­pres­sion and regains its vigor. Often with a single gesture, Matecki extracts the essence from the work of other artists and creates entirely new pain­tings exuding energy and humor, a kind of con­tem­porary, masterly capriccio.

2017 shows

Oskar Dawicki
MARY

Oskar Dawicki, a literary and film figure, an artist known as a prac­titioner of total per­for­mance, presents this time a dys­topian nar­rative: a kind of script, or more precisely a recon­struc­tion, of a per­for­mance originally direc­ted in a dream. The cen­tral figure in his vision is a pregnant woman, the heroine of our times, nourisher of the unborn but also caretaker of the dead. As befits a doub­ting artist, the world of his creation is full of ambivalence.

raster editions


BYT

A series of black and white photographs showing figures “found” in the shape of bran­ches, made of sticks, gras­ses, hay.

raster editions


Gutt’s Warsaw

“Romuald Gutt’s Warsaw” by Błażej Pindor, a book from our architec­tural Warsaw series of publications, with a special photograph by the artist in limited edition of 30 copies.

raster editions


Photographs

Collector’s edition of Zbigniew Libera’s “Photographs” album with a limited edition miniature format of his “First Day of Freedom” 2012 photograph.

raster editions


& Jan Smaga
Private Archive

A joint col­lec­tion of photographs to which Grzeszykow­ska and Smaga refer to as their “private archive” is on the one hand a peek into the back­ground of the couple’s artistic prac­tices, on the other—provides an indelible record of life in such a partnership.

raster editions


Message

The only exam­ple still for sale of the excep­tional early sculp­tural works by Budny that laun­ched the artist’s inter­national career.

raster editions


Behind reason

A series of prints on the over­looked story of mysticism within moder­nity, made to accompany Beyonsense, Slavs and Tatars’ Projects 98 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.