CURRENT temporary exhibition

Fryderyk Chopin Museum

Formally speaking. Sculpted images of Fryderyk Chopin

curators: Seweryn Kuter, Małgorzata Zawadzka
exhibition designer: Studio Karolina Fandrejewska

Kinetic space, in the exhibition design “Formally speaking. Sculptural images of Fryderyk Chopin”. The leitmotif of the exhibition arrangement is the issue of real and apparent motion. Metallic balloons with Chopin's image move under the influence of air movement and temperature changes, and the busts move along their own axis on pedestals with a mechanical turner, which serves as a display for the sculptures. We engage the viewer on a purely perceptual and psychological level, not on an emotional level. For our practice, these include research on the effects of optical illusion, on the other hand, concentration on pure movement, determined both naturally and mechanically. The indirect goal of the project is to illustrate the study of the mechanisms of vision, striving for a pictorial and artistic rendering of dynamics, optical phenomena and light in exhibitions. We use this tool to go beyond any fixed and closed compositional ambitions in imposed relationships between objects.

The project team: Karolina Fandrejewska, EWA MAZUR, MIKOŁAJ NIEWĘGŁOWSKI, Marta Lissowska, MONIKA RADZIKOWSKA, TYMOTEUSZ DĄBROWSKI

PAST temporary exhibition

The National Library. Palace of the Commonwealth

Miłosz. Return.

curator: Michał Szymański
exhibition designer: Studio Karolina Fandrejewska

Palace of the Commonwealth 28.06.2024 – 14.10.2024
curator: MICHAŁ SZYMAŃSKI // exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska // cooperation: MIKOŁAJ NIEWĘGŁOWSKI // VIDEO: MIKA ROSENFELD // graphic and editorial design: Marta Lissowska // Content coordinator: EWA MAZUR // photographer: ELA BIALKOWSKA OKNOSTUDIO

The exhibition Miłosz. Return presented original manuscripts, books, photographs and objects that came to the National Library from the poet's home in Berkeley and his flat in Kraków. Together, they form a visionary journey through moments in the writer's life that are impossible to recall without poetry.

Czesław Miłosz (1911–2004) was a poet, essayist, translator and one of the most eminent writers of the 20th century. He was born in Szetejnie, not far from Kiejdany, in the Russian Empire, in the territory of the former Great Duchy of Lithuania. He spent his youth in Vilnius, a city within Polish borders at the time, where he completed his studies at the Stefan Batory University and published his first two volumes of poetry: A Poem on Frozen Time and Three Winters. In the second half of the 1930s he moved to Warsaw, where he remained during the German occupation. His third volume, Rescue, appeared in late 1945, a ground-breaking book for Polish poetry, while the poet gave his support to the new regime and was sent on a diplomatic posting to the United States. In 1951 he decided to break with the Communist authorities, one of the first intellectuals in the Eastern Bloc to do so. He settled in France and established a permanent relationship with the émigré monthly Kultura published by Jerzy Giedroyć. In 1960 he moved with his wife and sons to America and started teaching literature at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1980 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature, and, after years of being banned, his works began being appearing again in Poland. After 1989 he regularly returned to Poland and became one of the key figures in the country's cultural life. In the last decade of his life he split his time between Kraków and California. He died in his Kraków apartment on August 14, 2004, aged 93.

curent temporary exhibition

Fryderyk Chopin Museum
Birthplace of Fryderyk Chopin

Wanda and Józef Gosławski. The art of life

curators: Sewerym Kuter, Maria Kominek-Karolak, Anna Rudzka
exhibition designer: Studio Karolina Fandrejewska

The Fryderyk Chopin Museum, Birthplace of Fryderyk Chopin 21.07.2024 – 15.12.2024
curators: Seweryn Kuter, Maria Kominek-KArolak, anna Rudzka // exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska // cooperation: MIKOŁAJ NIEWĘGŁOWSKI // graphic and editorial design: Marta Lissowska // coordinator: EWA MAZUR // photographer: ELA BIALKOWSKA OKNOSTUDIO

The exhibition tells the story of artists working in a special moment of history, marked by a severe shortage. The lack, however, did not hinder their activities but opened up new worlds and possibilities. Communist-era artists created from what was given to them, subject to the randomness of the things that surrounded them. Thus, Christmas tree toys made of imported soap wrappers, carved wooden boxes for trinkets or never-used glasses frames were created in the Gosławskis’ workshop. These things were never superfluous, though often impractical. They celebrated reality. They inseparably united art and life. The extraordinary diversity of Wanda and Józef Gosławski’s oeuvre, as well as their humour in difficult times, create an image of an artist who, while acting apolitically, at the same time finds himself surrounded by reality. The monument of Chopin by Józef Gosławski, created by the couple on one frosty New Year’s Eve, and later officially commissioned and unveiled in Żelazowa Wola in 1969, is juxtaposed with smaller sculptural images of Fryderyk Chopin, caricatures of various personalities and objects of applied art, in order to search for the surplus of meaning in such an emotionally dualistic space.

THIRD place in the competition

Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews

1945

curators: Anna Bikont, Kamil Kijek, Zuzanna Schnepf-Kołacz
exhibition designer: Studio Karolina Fandrejewska

The centerpiece of our exhibition proposal is a platform situated within the exhibition space, symbolizing the dislocation, rootlessness, and instability experienced by Jews following the Holocaust. This platform, designed without a predetermined path, empowers visitors to navigate the exhibition at their discretion, echoing the post-war dilemmas confronted by the Survivors. Elevated above the exhibition floor, which is envisaged as a dark, 'black lake', the platform metaphorically represents the pervasive anti-Semitism that Survivors had to navigate, an omnipresent backdrop to their reality. At the heart of the exhibition, a visually striking, three-dimensional map details pogroms and anti-Semitic outbreaks, with the intensity of the incidents reflected in the physical protrusions on the map. This feature serves as a crucial narrative anchor, emphasizing the scale and impact of aggression towards Jews. The arrangement of exhibition content—encompassing items displayed on desktops along the platform's edges, within showcases, on free-standing displays, and against the hall's walls—aims to maximize spatial openness. Particularly at eye level, we strive to maintain an unoccupied vista, mirroring the emotional void felt by Survivors post-conflict. Moreover, the inclusion of disposable outerwear for visitors not only complements the exhibition's thematic arrangement but also integrates them into the setting. As they move through the space, visitors add a dynamic layer of transient presence to the scenography.

The project team: Karolina Fandrejewska, EWA MAZUR, MIKOŁAJ NIEWĘGŁOWSKI, Marta Lissowska.

past temporary exhibition

MS2 Museum of Art in Łódź

Composing the Space.
Sculptures in the Avant-garde

curators: Małgorzata Jędrzejczyk, Katarzyna Słoboda
exhibition architecture: Karolina Fandrejewska

Following the experiments of the avant-garde sculptors, this exhibition examine the behind-the-scenes findings and consequences
of the fascinating modernist discoveries regarding the relationship between space, movement and body. Our guide here is Katarzyna Kobro herself and her artworks which are shown against the works of her contemporaries, such as: Naum Gabo, Alexander Calder, Barbara Hepworth, Antoine Pevsner, Jean Arp, Alexander Archipenko, and Julio Gonzales. Above all, we ask a question about how artists, while experimenting with the materiality and plasticity of time, space and dynamics of the rhythms of the human body, reflect the complexity of the experience of modernity. We also analyse what exactly characterised their search for new relations between abstract form and movement, as well as what visions of the relationship of man with the environment they proposed.

Following the ideas of creators who want to break free from identifying a sculpture piece with a solid and a closed form alone, the exhibition problematise the issue of the movement of receivers of art. It is accompanied by performative tours encouraging viewers to look again at the ways in which they engage their body and senses in the reception of the composition of the exhibition and the works exhibited there.

Artists: Aleksandr Archipenko, Jean Arp, Alexander Calder, Naum Gabo, Alberto Giacometti, Julio González, Barbara Hepworth, Maria Jarema, Katarzyna Kobro, Henri Laurens, El Lissitzky, László Moholy-Nagy, Zdeněk Pešánek, Antoine Pevsner, Aleksandr Rodczenko, Teodor Roszak, Władysław Strzemiński, Mieczysław Szczuka, Władimir Tatlin, Georges Vantongerloo, Henryk Wiciński, Ossip Zadkine, August Zamoyski

Museum of Art in Łódź  04.10.2019 - 02.02.2020 
curators: Małgorzata Jędrzejczyk, Katarzyna Słoboda // exhibition architecture: Karolina Fandrejewska // cooperation: Maciej Bychowski // graphic and editorial design: Ryszard Bienert // coordinator: Przemysław Purtak // photographer: Anna Zagrodzka

past temporary exhibition

Fryderyk Chopin Museum
Birthplace of Fryderyk Chopin

Janina Barcicka. Musical forms, cosmic forms.

curators: Maria Kominek-Karolak, Marta Tabakiernik
exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska

The intimate exhibition in Żelazowa Wola is Janina Barcicka's first solo exhibition in over 30 years. Its dominant feature is a sculptural portrait of Frederic Chopin, in which we see a synthesis of artistic means and the artist's creative path.

The Fryderyk Chopin Museum, Birthplace of Fryderyk Chopin 01.07.2023 – 31.10.2023
curators: Seweryn Kuter, Maria Kominek-KArolak, Marta Tabakiernik // exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska // cooperation: Anna Langowska // graphic and editorial design: Marta Lissowska // coordinator: Marta Tabakiernik // photographer: Jędrzej Sokołowski

past temporary exhibition

MS1 Museum of Art in Łódź

Moved Bodies.
Choreographies of modernity

curator: Katarzyna Słoboda
scenographer: Karolina Fandrejewska

With its starting point in the sculptural theory and practice of Katarzyna Kobro, the exhibition raises a question about the bodily and movement-related experience of modernity. The first half of the 20th century was the period of revolutionary ferment, from which a new man - that of the modernism era – was emerging. Women pioneering in modernist dance, e.g., Loïe Fuller or Isadora Duncan, broke with the rigid constraints of classical ballet forms and introduced freedom of expression into dance. In the early 20th century, the interest in body in motion translated into researching the its anatomical determinants and experimentation.

The key narrative of the exhibition is meant to give the viewers - via a number of archive films and photographs - an insight into dance and choreography experiments. Yet, the exposition is not only of archive nature: its layout was arranged in cooperation with an opera and dramatic theatre stage designer, Karolina Fandrejewska. Instead of architecture, she proposes the scenography creatively appropriated from the archive material meant to serve as an inspiration for performative activities by artists, such as Tomasz Bazan, Marysia Zimpel, Noa Eshkol Chamber Dance Group, Noa Shadur.

Artists:/Artyści: Akarova, Tomasz Bazan, Busby Berkeley, Fred Boissonnas, Giannina Censi, Chamber Dance Group, Rosalia Chladek, Émil-Jaques Dalcroze, Sonia Delaunay, Jane Dudley, Isadora Duncan, Noa Eshkol, Karolina Fandrejewska, Loïe Fuller, Martha Graham, Kurt Jooss, Katarzyna Kobro, Zygmunt Krauze, Rudolf Laban, Wsiewołod Meyerhold, The New Dance Group, Gret Palucca, Leni Riefenstahl, Józef Robakowski, Valentine de Saint-Point, Oskar Schlemmer, Edith Segal, Noa Shadur, Vera Skoronel, Władysław Strzemiński, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Helen Tamiris, Jean Weidt, Mary Wigman, Maria Zimpel.

Museum of Art in Łódź  18.11.2016 - 05.03.2017 
curator: Katarzyna Słoboda // scenographer: Karolina Fandrejewska // coordinator: Monika Wesołowska // cooperation: Katarzyna Mróz

second place in the competition

National Museum in Warsaw

Arcadia

curators: Agnieszka Rosales Rodríguez, Antoni Ziemba
exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska

In January 2023, we won the second place in the competition for the temporary exhibition of design of “Arcadia” at the National Muzeum in Warsaw.

National Museum in Warsaw  // curators: dr hab. Agnieszka Rosales Rodríguez, prof. Antoni Ziemba // exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska // cooperation & visuals: Anna Langowska

past temporary exhibition

Royal Castle in Warsaw

Love and Duty. The 1863 January Uprising

curator: Anna Czekaj
exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska

Q&A featuring the curator Anna Czekaj

The January Uprising was the largest and longest-lasting independence insurrection during the period of partitions. This uprising against the Russian invaders united Poles, Lithuanians, Belarussians, and Ukrainians, forever leaving its mark on our common memory and becoming an inspiration for the next generations of heroes fighting for freedom. The exhibition features works of art: paintings, prints and drawings by artists such as Artur Grottger, Maksymilian Gierymski and Jacek Malczewski, as well as artefacts from the period: photographs, civilian clothes and uniforms, weapons, patriotic jewellery and personal items. The aim of the exhibition is not only to preserve knowledge of the uprising, but also to stimulate historical imagination, making it possible to evoke the collective and individual emotions that accompanied the uprising. The exhibits come from museums in Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine.

Royal Castle in Warsaw - The Tin-Roofed Palace 24.01. - 16.04.2023 
curator: Anna Czekaj // exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska / design team: graphic design Barbara Bugalska / research, visuals, technical drawings Anna Langowska / light design Piotr Grześ / fragrance design Mariia Iakushevskaia, Victor Kochetov / sound design Bogdan S. Popescu / decorative plaster specialist Tomasz Łajszczak, Krzysztof Łajszczak / fragrance vessel Barbara Ruźniak / lector Łukasz Borkowski / realization Projekt 007 Joanna Dorota Zalewska, Emilia Zalewska, Magdalena Zalewska, Marcin Kruczewski // exhibition coordinator: Paweł Martosz

past temporary exhibition

Museum of Sculpture Królikarnia

Circus

curator: Katarzyna Szydłowska-Schiller
exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska

The circus tent was a place of true egalitarianism, bringing together people of all social classes, men and women, adults and children. Artists too were not immune to the pull of the circus. Others identified with the peculiarity of its performers, admiring their disregard for existing conventions, or were dazzled by the superhuman strength with which they opposed the forces of nature.

The Circus exhibition arose from our curator scouring the collections of primarily the National Museum in Warsaw, whose modern and ancient holdings include about one hundred objects of circus relevance, not counting the Poster Museum at Wilanów and its 370 circus posters. These are works by artists like: Roman Cieślewicz, Paul Klee, Ferdynand Léger, Jan Lenica, Leopold Lewicki, Max Liebermann, Jan Młodożeniec, Tymon Niesiołowski, Teresa Pągowska, Pablo Picasso, Henryk Tomaszewski, Witold Wojtkiewicz and Andrzej Wróblewski.

The Xawery Dunikowski Museum of Sculpture at Królikarnia, division of the National Museum in Warsaw 13.05. – 2.10.2022
curator: Katarzyna Szydłowska-Schiller // exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska // cooperation: Anna Langowska, Barbara Bugalska // coordinator: Kornelia Szpunar, Aleksandra Ochała // photographer: Bartosz Bajerski

past temporary exhibition

Museum of Warsaw 

Unseen.
Stories of Warsaw Servants

curator: Zofia Rojek
exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska

In the early 20th c., each year there were 40,000 young female domestic workers in Warsaw. They attended to household chores, cleaning houses and apartments, cooking meals and doing the laundry. Their work touched upon the most intimate aspects of lives of many generations of Varsovians. These women-domestics occupied backstage positions in the theatre of everyday life, and until recently have also remained on the margins of interest for historians, who, if they bothered to notice their presence, they have at best described them as a community included in statistics complementing the principal statistics.

Arranged in six rooms, more than 400 historical objects and contemporary works of art tell the story of the lives of the women-servants and the history of domestic work. The layout of the exhibition reflects the journey a domestic worker made from the moment she arrived in Warsaw, searched for a job, received it, and performed her daily chores.

The Museum of Warsaw  18.11.2021 - 20.03.2022 
curator: Zofia Rojek // exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska // cooperation: Anna Langowska // graphic design: Kaja Gliwa //coordinator: Klementyna Świeżewska // photographer: Tomasz Kaczor

past temporary exhibition

The National Museum in Lublin

The Magic of Ancient Egypt

curator: Maciej Drewniak
exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska

The National Museum in Lublin  30.09.2022 - 05.03.2023 
curator: Maciej Drewniak // exhibition designer:  Karolina Fandrejewska // design team: graphic design Barbara Bugalska, Łukasz Bugalski / cooperation, visuals, technical drawings: Anna Langowska / sound design Bogdan S. Popescu / realization Projekt 007 Joanna Dorota Zalewska, Emilia Zalewska, Magdalena Zalewska, Marcin Kruczewski // exhibition coordinator: Krystyna Rzędzian // photographer: Anna Zagrodzka

past temporary exhibition

Fryderyk Chopin Museum
Birthplace of Fryderyk Chopin

My Botanical Garden. Watercolours by Diana Długosz-Jasinska

curators: Marta Tabakiernik, Łukasz Kaczmarowski
exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska

The Fryderyk Chopin Museum, Birthplace of Fryderyk Chopin 25.06.2022 – 27.11.2022
curators: Marta Tabakiernik, Łukasz Kaczmarowski // exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska // cooperation: Anna Langowska // graphic and editorial design: Barbara Bugalska // coordinator: Marta Tabakiernik // photographer: Jakub Mozolewski

past temporary exhibition

Fryderyk Chopin Museum

The Power of a Symbol

curators: Seweryn Kuter, Marta Tabakiernik
exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska

past temporary exhibition

The Malbork Castle Museum

Sapientia aedificavit sibi domum
”Wisdom Has Built Herself a Home”
The Teutonic state in Prussia.

curator: Janusz Trupinda
exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska

An international show comprising several hundred exhibits was present the two dimensions of Teutonic rule in Prussia, ostensibly mutually opposed - the ideological and the practical - both contributing to the uniqueness of a state managed in its prime by several hundred brethren. The exhibition was held at the castle in Malbork, which - originally built as a conventual fortress - gradually evolved into the capital of a powerful state. Proper comprehension of the nature of Teutonic rule in Prussia is one of the keys to the consequent traps of the role and importance of this castle - turned - capital.

The Malbork Castle Museum 14.09. - 17.11.2019 
curators: Janusz Trupinda…. // exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska // cooperation: Maciej Bychowski // light designer: Małgorzata Szyłak // cooperation: Filip Drożdż, ErcoLight // graphic design: Maciej Bychowski // coordinator: Beata Stawarska, Karolina Fandrejewska // photographer: Ela Białkowska OKNOStudio

past temporary exhibition

The Malbork Castle Museum

Bilde von Prage

curators: Monika Czapska, Monika Jakubek - Raczkowska
exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska

past temporary exhibition

Royal Castle in Warsaw

Chopin. Romantic salon

curator: Aleksandra Buszta-Bąk
exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska

A treat awaits Chopin fans in the capital at the Royal Castle’s exhibition dedicated to the pianist in the run up to the XVIII International Chopin Competition. The exhibition gathers items connected to the composer from Poland, France and Spain, including handwritten musical scores, portraits of people important in his life and his death mask. Labelled Chopin and the Romantic Salon, the exhibition shines a spotlight on the important institution in the social life of the 19th century, which was the salon, a kind of moveable meeting place for the nineteenth century jet-set. The central exhibit, Henryk Siemiradzki's painting 'Chopin in the salon of Prince Antoni Radziwiłł in 1829’, shows this milieu well. On loan from the private collection of John Radziwiłł who lives in New York, the canvass was shown in Poland at various venues
in the 1880s. Accompanying the exhibition is a series of piano recitals by world-class pianists, including Poland’s Szymon Nehring, who was a finalist in the 2015 International Chopin Competition. The prestigious competition comes round only once every five years and is regarded as the World Cup and Olympics of the piano world rolled into one.

Royal Castle in Warsaw 04.09. - 14.11.2021 
curator: Aleksandra Buszta-Bąk // exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska // cooperation: Anna Langowsk // coordinator: Paweł Martosz // photographer: Volatus Media

past temporary exhibition

Fryderyk Chopin Museum
Birthplace of Fryderyk Chopin

Harmony. Marcin Ryczek photography exhibition

curator: Krzysztof Przylicki
exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska

past temporary exhibition

Fryderyk Chopin Museum

I see music

curator: Marta Tabakiernik
exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska

The exhibition I See Music represents the Chopin Museum’s attempt to ‘portray’ Chopin’s music, based on the example of works from its own collection. It presents numerous concepts and inspirations and shows various approaches taken by artists to the question of the correspondence of the arts, including artistic renderings of their experiences of synaesthesia.

The Fryderyk Chopin Museum 15.05. - 12.09.2021 
curator: Marta Tabakiernik // exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska // cooperation: Anna Langowska // graphic and editorial design: Alina Rybacka-Gruszczyńska // coordinator: Marta Tabakiernik // photographer: Jakub Mozolewski

past temporary exhibition

The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

Practical beauty. KUL by Maria Chomentowska

curators: Students in History of Art KUL
exhibition designer: Karolina Fandrejewska

On the fifth anniversary of death of Maria Chomentowska (1924-2013), one of the most outstanding Polish furniture and interior designers - co-creator of “furniture style of Institute of Industrial Design” - Polish functionalism, Art History students of the Catholic University of Lublin prepared the first monographic exhibition of her work.

Chairs “spider” and “lungs“ created by Chomentowska are considered as icons of Polish design. At the Catholic University of Lublin, her magnum opus was created - the arrangement of almost all public spaces of the main building of the Catholic University of Lublin, the College of John Paul II, City Student Hall on the Niecała street, the Old Polish Manor on Pochekaika, Creative Work House in Kazimierz Dolny (in total several dozen projects created over 40 years). The exhibition was prepared by the museum of the Catholic University of Lublin in cooperation with Art History students.

The partner of the exhibition is Polish Institute of Industrial Design.