And All Other Wizardly Matters / Bożena Grzyb Jarodzka, Ewa Ciepielewska, Konstanty Laszczka, Olga Mokrzycka, Małgorzata Mycek, Agnieszka Brzeżańska, Karol Radziszewski

Ewa Ciepielewska, born 1960, is a Polish painter, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw, Poland. She was a co-founder of the Wroclaw-based LUXUS Group. In 1994-95 she collaborated on the publication of the Cracow's magazine Friday Evening and participated in the artistic events happening around it. Since 1984, she has been exhibiting individually and undertaking independent artistic ventures and pro-ecological activities. In 1995-1996, she co-founded the Volatile Festival beyond the Wall in the two-person group Blue Panthers (Panterras Azzurras). Since 1997, she has been implementing the art project VOLANS. Contemporary Art in 1000 Pieces, which she co-authored. She participates in group exhibitions at home and abroad and is the author of solo exhibitions, outdoor actions, murals, and socially engaged happenings. Since the 1980s, she has also co-organized exhibitions and events related to the Lunar New Year (Nowy Rok Księżycowy). 

Since 2008, she has been making voyages by wooden boat from Cracow to Gdansk in May as a part of the Royal Flis on the Vistula River. Since 2015, she has been organizing an international artist residency on the Salt Galar floating on the Vistula, which took the name FLOW/Float after she joined Agnieszka Brzeżanska's project. She is interested in social and communal situations and the search for non-institutional forms of being together in the face of social and ecological crises. 

In the 1980s she was a participant in movements related to new age, esotericism and anthroposophy. In the 1990s, she was fascinated by rave culture, which resulted in a series of outdoor performance activities. She was a pioneer of culinary performance and environmental movements in art. She enjoys cooking cuisine inspired by the principle of the five transformations, is a declared advocate of legalizing marijuana and lubricates herself everyday with rosehip oil. If she could, she would spend all year on the water. She believes she is one of many witches - her method of work is sometimes madness. (Text: Anna Batko, Kola Sliwinska)

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Karol Radziszewski 

He works with film, photography, installations and creates interdisciplinary projects. Born in 1980 in Bialystok, Poland. Lives and works in Warsaw, Poland, where he received his MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in 2004. His practice extends to magazines, artist books, fashion as well as curatorial concept projects. Publisher and editor-in-chief of DIK Fagazine. 

For over a decade now, Karol Radziszewski has been consistently developing the heritage of the LGBT+ community with special emphasis on male and female artists from Central Europe. The Queer Archive Institute - QAI - he has set up is a one-man institution which documents achievements of artists from the countries of the former Eastern Bloc, who, because of the geopolitical factors, had had no chance to become known to general public. With his works shown in institutions all over the world, Radziszewski rewrites life stories, returning the right place in history to people who had been deprived of it. 

Radziszewski’s recent solo and group exhibitions include the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2023); Between Bridges, Berlin (2023); Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2022); Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz (2021); Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana (2020); CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (2019); Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (2019); VideoBrasil, São Paulo (2016); Wroclaw Contemporary Museum (2012). He has participated in several international biennales, including PERFORMA 13, New York; 7th Göteborg Biennial; 4th Prague Biennial and 14th Baltic Triennial. In 2021, The Power of Secrets book dedicated to Radziszewski’s archival practice was published by Sternberg Press. 

Residencies: 

2014 FUTURA Center for Contemporary Art, Prague 

2011 Residency Unlimited, New York 

2009 New Media Center_kuda.org, Novi Sad 

2007 Casino Luxembourg, Luxembourg 

2006 PROGR, Bern 

Awards and Honors:

2024 Grand Prix award of the 17th International Theater Festival Divine Comedy 

2009 Paszport Polityki Award 

2009 Minister of Culture and National Heritage Scholarship 

2007 Deutsche Bank Foundation Prize finalist 

2006 Minister of Culture Scholarship 

2006 Samsung Art Master Prize 

2002 Minister of Culture Scholarship 

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Olga Mokrzycka – Painter and theatre scenographer. She graduated from the Faculties of Painting (with a specialization in animated film) and Stage Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In the field of visual arts she creates paintings on canvas, wood, and concrete, as well as site-specific installations. As a theatre scenographer she has designed stage sets for productions at the Nowy Teatr and Teatr Studio in Warsaw. 

She creates figurative painting series on black grounds. The paintings are produced using a distinctive, self-developed technique—each work is painted with only a few synthetic, precisely executed brushstrokes. This process requires intense focus and concentration. There is no room for error: an unsuccessful line must be painted over and the painting started again from the beginning. 

The resulting visual record resembles an X-ray image or a graphic drawing. The themes of her works revolve around the lives and everyday experiences of women and mothers—multitasking, emotional states, and eroticism. In a similar stylistic approach she created an earlier series titled “Mermaids”—depictions of the Warsaw mermaids referencing the aesthetics of concrete, monuments, and modernism. Three of these works are in the collection of the Museum of Warsaw.

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Agnieszka Brzeżanska – (born 1972) currently lives in Warsaw. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, in Warsaw, and at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music. Her work explores elusive links between various natural forces and life forms on Earth, which she perceives as Gaia, a living organism. In this, she uses various registers of knowledge, from physics and philosophy to systems of cognition marginalized by modern science, such as alchemy, parapsychology, esotericism, native knowledge or matriarchal traditions. She is also interested in contemporary ecological practices. She is an author of paintings, drawings, films, photographs and ceramics. In 2024 Agnieszka Brzeżanska was awarded the Annual Prize of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage in the Visual Arts category. 

Works at the collections: 

Museum of Art, Łódź 

ING Polish Art Foundation 

Arsenał Gallery, Białystok 

NOMUS, Gdańsk 

RISD Museum, Rhode Island 

National Museum, Poznań

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Małgorzata Mycek – (they/them, he/his, she/her) was born in 1993. Małgorzata Mycek is a laureate of the 47th Painting Biennale Bielska Jesień 2025. Małgorzata Mycek is a painter and performance artist. He grew up in the countryside, in a small village in the Bieszczady mountains in the 1990s, which he frequently explores in his work. His projects convey an interest in vernacular culture and engagement in current political affairs. For he, art is a form of therapy, enabling the processing of trauma and the struggle with a difficult reality. 

Mycek’s projects reverberate with an interest in vernacular and queer culture, and an activist engagement with current issues. In 2020, it defended its master’s degree in painting and drawing at the University of Arts in Poznan. Honoured in the Allegro Prize 2021 competition and in the 40th Edition of the Maria Dokowicz competition for the best thesis. Finalist of the 19th edition of the Hestia Artistic Journey competition. Until 2022, co-founder of the Bomba Publishing initiative awarded in the national competition Young Wolves 2019.

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Bożena Grzyb-Jarodzka 

Born in 1959. A painter, graphic artist, interior designer, connected with Wrocław since her birth. Graduated from PWSSP National High School of Fine Arts on Painting, Sculpture and Graphic Faculty at Konrad Jarodzki in 1984. Together with a group of her year students, her future husband among them she curated the Luxus art group with which she has exhibited to the present day. 

She published drawings and graphics in a magazine brought out by the group under the same name. Her paintings from the 1980s are the images of both contemporary friends, representatives of youth subculture and ideological and philosophical idols of generation of the 80s ( e. g. Dylan, 1988). 

The best known however are her going back to sugary poetics of Hollywood image of cinema heros based on available photographs- the artist truly portrays although perfidiously travesties (Electric kiss, Love will overcome Death, 1988) Florid bright-coloured spots covering canvases suggest psychedelic visions. Colouristic cacophony and the use of kitsch composed specific form of contemporary omnipresent greyness of life and at the same time demonstration of freedom and creative independence of art. The artist has been creating (multi format) big size portraits of real people often settled in a luxuriant, floral background. There is a fascination of Pop-Art in it, oneiric and romance as well, often the starting-point for the paintings is an accidental photograph or a film frame, but always nucleus for a thought about human and his emotions and feelings. The series of artist’s paintings are: Well-knows and Friends, Stars, Good Matches, Favorite artists.

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Konstanty Laszczka was born on 3 September 1865 in Makowiec Duży and died on 23 March 1956 in Kraków. He was a sculptor and educator who also worked in printmaking, watercolor painting, and ceramics. 

Laszczka studied under Jan Kryński and Ludwik Pyrowicz. Between 1891 and 1896, he lived in Paris, where he was able to study thanks to a scholarship. In 1899, he settled in Kraków, dedicating himself to an academic career. For nearly thirty years, he headed the Department of Sculpture at the Kraków School of Fine Arts. Among his students were many distinguished artists, including Xawery Dunikowski. Laszczka's work reflects the influences of Art Nouveau, Impressionism, and the sculpture of Auguste Rodin. 

He explored a wide range of subjects. In his small sculptural group compositions, he depicted scenes from rural Polish life and folk types, while also drawing inspiration from Slavic mythology. He was also an outstanding portrait sculptor.