Smoke Murmur / Joanna Małecka / shlagart
curator: Wiktor Skok
The exhibition is open on 31 October – 22 November
Gallery Open
Mon. – Fri. from 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Sat. – Sun. from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
or by phone: Adam Klimczak, 793 434 420
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Project 3, “A series of original exhibitions at Galeria Wschodnia (September–December 2026)”, is being carried out thanks to funding from the City of Łódź’s budget as part of a competition organised by the Culture Department of the City of Łódź
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Noise and smoke in the city centre
How can one translate one’s most intimate, primal and personal memories from the past into visual form? What means should one use to restore, if only for a moment, the reality of a bygone era? How can one recreate that lost aura, and how can one evoke an atmosphere that now seems elusive?
‘Smoke Murmur’ is not just another exhibition by Joanna Małecka. It draws directly on personal themes – images from the past imprinted on the subconscious. It is an attempt to tap into deeply hidden impressions, afterimages from early childhood.
The venue is right in the heart of Łódź. The Wschodnia Gallery is situated in the very centre of the city. On all sides, we are surrounded by a repetitive, almost identical landscape: a grid of straight streets, dark, enclosed courtyards on all sides, shabby gates, outbuildings and a chronic lack of sunlight.
It was precisely this area at the very heart of the city – the courtyards and tenement houses around Piotrkowska and Jaracza Streets – that served as Joanna Małecka’s starting point, her first stage and something of a mental stronghold. In the project ‘Smoke Murmur’, however, there is no room for sentimentality. We encounter nothing here that resembles a hackneyed cliché or the notion of a ‘sentimental journey’.
Black and white form the fundamental starting point. The monochromatic nature is merely a first impression, broken up by specially devised techniques. Disciplined streaks, stripes and lines on the tarmac, graphic abbreviations, road signs and raw, rough textures are skilfully employed here – both as a visual asset and as a vehicle for meaning. The result is a confrontation between the material and the advanced forms created in the studio. Joanna Małecka’s works define clear divisions, oppositions and contrasting clashes between white and black. The artist does not hesitate to introduce sharp, diagonal conflicts of energy into the space of the artwork.
‘Smoke Murmur’ demonstrates an ability to transform personal narratives into a universal artefact of great expressive power – one capable of speaking to an audience to whom the places and experiences evoked are likely to be unfamiliar. The city centre – a zone of imperfection, defect and grime – also contains private paths and proves to be a space of immense inspirational potential. The centre of Łódź: a rugged, unwelcoming space of neglect and filth. The state of the buildings and infrastructure seems to be a broader reflection of a particular mental condition. Condemned to exist in this environment, we do not, however, succumb to its negative aura – we develop our own modus vivendi. We confront the stigmas in order to gain the strength of liberation. Awareness of our own roots becomes the measure of balance, a freedom that allows for creative exploration without a depressing and paralysing burden. The distance of time and place enables a constructive, creative interpretation. ‘Smoke Murmur’ is proof of a positive re-examination of even the most complex heritage.
However, the action is not confined solely to Łódź. The artist’s presence on the electro-techno music scene was linked to a fascination with synthetic sounds and the aesthetics of neon and ultraviolet lighting. She translated her inspiration from modern layout and typography into original designs for posters, leaflets and graphics, which, at the turn of the 1990s and the 21st century, accompanied events in nightclubs and illegal parties organised in bunkers or underpasses. Her skill, consistency and energy enabled her to navigate boldly across a range of expressive media. Amidst the wealth and diversity of her themes, a sense of coherence is evident, maintained throughout many years of continuous evolution.
In 2012, Joanna Małecka launched her own project, Shlagart, which undertakes initiatives in the fields of design and the applied arts. Her work spans a wide range of media – from painting and drawing, through sculpture, to multimedia installations. Over the years, the scope of her activities (including original concepts, solo exhibitions, academic practice and educational initiatives) has extended to many locations around the world. The artist’s methodology remains in a state of constant transformation. Her creative dynamism encompasses many threads and motifs, and shows no sign of slowing down. Constant movement seems to be the only constant here.
The exhibition ‘Smoke Murmur’ makes effective use of the spatial conditions of the Galeria Wschodnia. The series of prints and monochrome paintings are accompanied by a sound installation that captures the sombre character of the urban audiosphere. The project harmonises with the layout of the rooms, which over the course of several decades have hosted hundreds of diverse artistic projects. This almost symbolic return to a personal starting point and Joanna Małecka’s entry into the space of the legendary gallery brings a new, extraordinary quality to 29 Wschodnia Street.
Wiktor Skok, 2026
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SZUM DYMU is a site-specific exhibition, created especially for the unique space of Galeria Wschodnia – a place that provides a symbolic framework for my personal narrative. Housed in a tenement building, the gallery resembles a childhood courtyard – a concrete well of sounds, a place of memories and a record of everyday life. It is from this topography that a new form emerges – a conceptual spatial installation, set within the physical and symbolic landscape of Łódź. The exhibition not only evokes a sensory memory of the city, but also subjects it to both artistic reconstruction and deconstruction. The gallery, as a place, becomes a space of transition – between the past and the present, the individual and the collective, the physical and the spiritual.
SZUM DYMU is a multimedia reflection on the urban landscape of the place where I was born and raised. It is an artistic narrative about the view from the windows of a concrete courtyard on Piotrkowska Street and the passageways with their peeling walls, as well as about the deeply rooted industrial character, filled with smoke from chimneys, dust and noise. It is a visual and sensory record of Łódź – the city I remember from my childhood and the one I know today, where the past intertwines with the present. The project comprises monochromatic graphic works, paintings and sound installations, capturing the austerity and melancholy of Łódź’s landscape.
The exhibition SMOKE MURMUR / SZUM DYMU is a reflection on presence, memory and the cyclical nature of existence. Its starting point is the experience of the ‘here and now’ – a moment in which change is not a separate event, but reveals itself as a natural and constant feature of reality.
No form is definitive. Each contains traces of what has passed and the potential of what may yet emerge. Life, death and rebirth do not function here as opposing states, but as interpenetrating stages of a continuous process of transformation. Matter becomes a vessel of memory, and its transformations reveal the tension between persistence and disappearance, presence and absence. Smoke becomes a trace of absence – a fleeting testimony to what has passed, yet still endures in the memory of matter.
That which appears motionless remains in a constant state of flux. That which fades does not cease to exist, but takes on a different form. The economy of expression, the monochromatic palette and the reduction of form direct attention towards the fundamental properties of matter and its capacity for transformation. Nature is not the subject of representation here, but rather the organising principle for thinking about reality – a ceaseless process of the emergence, disintegration and re-emergence of forms.
Fragmentary structures, geometric divisions and the rhythms of industrial spaces are reflected in compositions where the order of form meets the expression of matter. In the screen-printed works on raw canvas and linen, the natural texture of the substrate becomes an integral part of the image. The organic nature of the fibres, the irregularity of the marks and the variation in the saturation of the black stand in tension with the geometric order of the composition. The rawness of the material coexists with the rawness of the industrial landscape, creating a space in which the image does not so much reproduce reality as preserve the memory of its transformations. The experience of presence is explored in the installation *I Am Here and Now*, in which a steel bowl filled with water becomes a space for reflection and contemplation.
The accompanying sounds of breathing and a heartbeat evoke the fundamental rhythm of human existence. Water, steel and sound establish a relationship between the materiality of the object and the immaterial experience of time. The reflection, subject to subtle changes, becomes a metaphor for impermanence and constant becoming.
SMOKE MURMUR / SZUM DYMU is an invitation to pause and experience
the present – the moment in which memory, matter and time intertwine, revealing the fragility, continuity and constant transformation of existence.
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Joanna Małecka is a visual ar(st, painter, and printmaker with a PhD in Fine Arts. Her
interdisciplinary prac(ce encompasses pain(ng, printmaking, sculptural objects, and installa(ons incorpora(ng sound and light. Her work explores themes of presence, memory, and impermanence, focusing on the transforma(on of maDer and the rela(onships between form, material structure, and space
She lives and works in Łódź, where she develops her independent ar(s(c project, shlagart. She is affiliated with Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce, where she heads the Screen Prin(ng Studio. She has par(cipated in interna(onal ar(st residencies and is the recipient of fellowships and awards. Her work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibi(ons na(onally and interna(onally, including in the United States, across Europe, Peru, South Korea, and beyond.
www.shlagart.com
The book 'Galeria Wschodnia. Documents 1984-2017 / Documents 1984-2017', edited by Daniel Muzyczuk and Tomasz Załuski, is a monumental study of the history of one of the longest-established authorial art spaces in Poland. The Wschodnia Gallery is an important example of artists' self-organisation and a centre whose history is symptomatic of transformations in the independent gallery movement. This nodal place on the map of Polish art also reveals how many shades the concept of independence can have.
Galeria Wschodnia was founded in 1984 on the initiative of, among others, Jerzy Grzegorski and Adam Klimczak, who took over the flat at 29 Wschodnia Street from the troupe Arlekin i Pantalon, run by Jarosław Orłowski, Piotr Bikont and Wojciech Czajkowski. The place, where various forms of creativity originally intersected and theatre rehearsals, free jazz sessions and political activity were the order of the day, became an important spot for independent art from the mid-1980s onwards. The gallery and its creators were also involved in important artistic initiatives taking place in Lodz, such as the subsequent Constructions in Process and the Artists' Museum. The leading artistic forms within its programme were installations and performances, clearly indicating a strategy of expanding the autonomy of the artist. Author's galleries were, after all, founded precisely in order to give all the power over the conditions for the presentation of art to its creators.
The main part of the book is a detailed study by Tomasz Załuski focused on the activities of the gallery in the broad context of the situation of other, related centres and organisations. It also contains a set of archival texts related to the East, written by Jerzy Busza, Jolanta Ciesielska, Maciej Cholewiński, Adam Klimczak, Maria Morzuch and Józef Robakowski. The content is complemented by materials related to the gallery's anniversary exhibition held at the Museum of Art in 2014, including texts by Daniel Muzyczuk and Mikołaj Iwański, as well as a calendar and an extensive photographic archive that gives an idea of the diversity of artistic forms hosted at Eastern over the years.
The publisher of the book is the Wschodnia Gallery / In Search Of... Foundation, and the co-publisher is the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź. The publication was co-financed by the City of Lodz Office as part of the Publishing Programme.
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