Open System

13/03/2026 - 11/04/2026

Andreea Anghel | Magdalena Lazar | Piotr Lewandowski | Max Radawski | Paweł Zaręba

The exhibition Open System grows out of the experience of a place. A year ago, we opened the doors of bliss at Szpitalna 5, in a space scarred and layered, with palimpsests of former plasters and wooden parquet floors emerging from beneath sheets of roofing felt, in a tenement building that since the late nineteenth century functioned as a site of work and exchange of services, and that survived the war, modernizing losses, and successive changes of use. Thinking about the gallery, its location, and about Warsaw led us to the association with an open system—something alive, changeable, remaining in constant exchange with its surroundings. From the very beginning of its existence, the tenement building has operated as an open system, and the gallery and each exhibition function in this way as well: paintings respond to light, space responds to the presence of viewers, nothing is autonomous; each work enters into relation with another, with the architecture, and with the body of the person standing in front of it. The exhibition features objects by Andrea Anghel, photographs and spatial realizations by Magdalena Lazar and Maks Radawski, video and an installation by Piotr Lewandowski, as well as alucobond works by Paweł Zaręba. The works engage with themes of circulation, transformation, fragility, and the tension between what protects and what exposes to external forces. Open System thus becomes a story about flow—of materials, energy, history, and presence—about a place and relationships that remain porous and, precisely because of this, alive.

curator: Katarzyna Piskorz