10 Exhibitions in Warsaw That Capture a Cultural Landscape in Motion
Across 60 exhibitions in foundations, museums and independent spaces, Warsaw Gallery Weekend’s 16th edition revealed a cultural ecology more interested in testing new formats than settling into fixed ones. Here’s what’s still on and worth seeing.
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Warsaw Gallery Weekend returned for its 16th edition September 18-20, bringing 60 exhibitions to foundations, museums, galleries and independent spaces across the Polish capital. Its scale is substantial, yet this particular art event never feels over-organized. Longstanding institutions host shows beside younger initiatives, and very different exhibition models coexist without friction.
That range has widened through WGW+, introduced last year and back for 2026 with artist-led projects, temporary formats and nonprofit organizations joining the main selection. Speaking to Observer, director Joanna Witek-Lipka emphasized how much the local cultural infrastructure has changed, with alternative structures emerging outside conventional frameworks and assuming an increasingly visible role in Warsaw's cultural identity. Geography matters too. The fact that Warsaw Gallery Weekend programming crosses neighborhood divides makes the experience feel inseparable from its surroundings.
What stood out most last weekend was the palpable sense of momentum, with new arrivals testing ideas without waiting for established names to sanction them. A repurposed school can serve as an exhibition site. A nomadic truck can function as a viewing room. Historical pressure runs beneath many of the works still on view, with war and memory recurring themes, but experimentation is equally present. The result is less like a showcase than a way of reading an evolving metropolis through its creative ecology. Here's what's still on and worth seeing.
"Who Promised It Was Going to Be Alright? We Never Did. Indeed (History Knows No 'If')"
- Gunia Nowik Gallery, Bracka 20A, 00-028
- Through November 7, 2026
Sana Shahmuradova Tanska's second solo show here turns Ukrainian mythology toward the present without using it as refuge. Born in Odesa in 1996, she addresses inherited history and the psychic force of war, asking what survives once certainty collapses. Her canvases span prophecy and political reality while keeping care close to resistance. Mute Swans and Expulsion (Archangel Michael, Adam, and Eve), after Bosch, both from 2026, are especially affecting. Myth enables a confrontation with violence. It also leaves room for images that exceed the limits imposed by official narratives.
"What Happens on Earth Stays on Earth"
- bliss gallery, Szpitalna 5/7, 00-031
- Through October 24, 2026
Opened in spring 2025, bliss has quickly established itself as the city's freshest addition. Curated by Eva Slabá, Magdalena Lazar's project begins in Upper Silesia, where she grew up among mining landscapes. Photography meets cast glass, textiles and metal as geology collides with speculative biology. The eponymous large-scale installation incorporates found 1980s decorative glassware bearing alchemical imagery and apocalyptic signs. Another standout, Second Sun (2026), pairs jacquard fabric with steel and a vintage lamp. Extraction is rendered intimate through matter, almost strangely alive, while industrial memory resurfaces in unexpected configurations.
"Loose Medley"
- MONOPOL, Marszałkowska 34/50, 00-552
- Through November 14, 2026
Polish painter Martyna Pinkowska places anonymous women in domestic interiors where daily routine slowly absorbs the body. Dishes and chairs surround elongated figures that keep tidying and rearranging, as if activity itself could hold life together. Muted earthy tones soften the rooms, but the atmosphere stays uneasy. Each protagonist appears to merge with the geometry around her. Paper collages by Teresa Pągowska from the early 1990s accompany the display, although Pinkowska's pictures carry its psychological weight. Dolls and Happiness Industry, both painted this year, are striking. Melancholy is tempered by a precise sense of theatrical control.
"Mangle"
- TURNUS, Emilii Plater 31, 00-688
- Through October 25, 2026
This space rejects the traditional gallery formula. Founded in 2020 by Kamila Falęcka and Marcelina Gorczyńska, the curatorial collective combines exhibitions with a café and a wider social program. Since April, it has occupied a school building on Emilii Plater Street. Tomasz Tofilski takes his title from an old ironing service in Warsaw's Praga district, where his studio is located. That setting offers a key to his wrinkled picture-objects, which question how an image should sit on its support. Butelki (2026), featuring varnished pigment prints of water bottles mounted on cardboard, brings his interest in surface and instability into sharp focus.
"WGWROOOOOOOM"
- Galeria Szaber, Emilii Plater 31, 00-688
- Through September 26, 2026
Parked outside TURNUS, a truck became the weekend's liveliest intervention. Inside, the Kraków-based group staged an unstable mix of objects hovering between artwork and merchandise. The setup leaned into camp yet never tipped into decoration. Everything seemed provisional and faintly suspicious, as though the scene had been interrupted halfway through a dubious exchange. Olivia Rosa, Paweł Donhöffner Zięba, Michał Maliński and Sebastian Mikoś treat nonsense as method rather than punchline. Humor sits next to discomfort, while questions of value are left unresolved. That friction made this mobile proposition a distinctive voice in Warsaw Gallery Weekend.
"THREE COLOURS"
- Foksal Gallery Foundation, Górskiego 1A, 00-033
- Through November 7, 2026
Paulina Ołowska enters into a loose conversation with Krzysztof Kieślowski's film trilogy without turning cinema into a fixed reference point. Painting here opens onto scenography and costume, creating an atmosphere where biography slips into fiction. Her long engagement with modernist design and late-socialist visual culture continues without slipping into nostalgia. Rather than following a linear sequence, the presentation unfolds through fragments and associations. Private recollection brushes against shared iconography, then changes register again. Her richly saturated painting Autobiography of Red (2026) is particularly compelling. It carries multiple suggestions at once while evading any single interpretation.
"In Between"
- TBA, Wilcza 62, 00-679
- Through October 31, 2026
Kateryna Lysovenko's second solo show at the gallery consists of 11 watercolors made for the occasion. The Ukrainian artist reverses the expected geography of hell. Violence occurs above ground, while the dead awaken beneath it. Bodies thrown into a mass grave gradually fuse with animal heads and branches into hybrid beings before rising in revolt. The narrative draws on the Book of Revelation, yet its apocalyptic turn is not treated as destruction. Instead, the murdered return as a vision of justice. The sequence is stark and emotionally difficult without becoming sensational. Its power lies in refusing disappearance and restoring agency to those erased.
"Sławek Max Machina"
- Lisowski, Chmielna 8, 00-020
- Through October 31, 2026
Sławomir Belina ranged across photography and video, frequently activating both through performance. He also helped forge the aesthetic of Polish lifestyle magazines in the early 2000s, including Max and Machina. He mixed high art with fashion and everyday culture, using irony to probe sexuality and self-image. After his death in 2019, much of the material vanished from public view. This show marks a broader effort to recover and catalog his legacy. Gallerist Cezary Lisowski calls it part of "Poland's queer heritage" and a history of gay art once thought lost. That archival urgency pushes the project well beyond rediscovery.
"Uncanny Valley"
- IMPORT EXPORT, Aleja Szucha 16/7, 00-582
- Through October 31, 2026
Laurie Simmons brings five decades of image-making into contact with artificial intelligence. Her recent Autofiction films start from text prompts based on remembered or invented episodes before developing through editing and narration. For the related Autofiction: My Collaborator series, Simmons trained a custom model on her photographic archive, then reworked the generated results by hand. Designer interiors mingle with doll-like figures as familiar scenes become subtly estranged. The gallery has also extended "Moving Skies," its summer presentation of monochromatic paintings by Cathy Josefowitz, in a more compact form in response to popular demand. The pairing sets synthetic invention against painterly restraint.
"The Shortest Distance"
- Stereo, Tamka 37/1, 00-355
- Through October 31, 2026
Gizela Mickiewicz's sixth exhibition with the gallery gives physical form to the relationship between bodies and their surroundings. Direct casting remains central to her process. Impressions taken from rocks or trees are combined with traces of arms and fingertips, producing sculptural hybrids that preserve specific encounters with place. Her embrace of recognizable forms sharpens that connection but stops short of literalism. Glass and bronze expand the material vocabulary yet retain a sense of fragility. Mickiewicz has said she wants to shape the bond between a person and space. These pieces do so quietly, making something solid from experiences that are otherwise difficult to hold.
