
Good is the enemy of better
In this exhibition, I present a new body of work made primarily from steel. It is a material I grew up with. My father ran a company producing steel machinery and structures, and the industrial district of Jasło, centered around Towarowa Street, remains one of the defining landscapes of my childhood.
When I think back to the 1990s, I see construction sites, cranes, industrial halls, and prefabricated concrete factories. I remember the atmosphere of transformation, the arrival of Western goods, the first pizza restaurants, Turbo chewing gum, and Caro cigarettes. It was a moment when Poland was becoming colorful, and steel seemed to embody the material of the future.
For my father, steel primarily served a practical function. What mattered were its strength, elasticity, technical properties, and durability. Raw steel was considered unfinished — it had to be protected, painted, and preserved against the passage of time.
I see something entirely different in it. Hot-rolled steel, in particular, possesses an almost painterly quality. Its surface is marked by discolorations, traces of heat, and reflections that resemble oil stains. Steel absorbs time, reacts to touch, and records scratches and changes. It becomes a carrier of memory.
In the presented works, I juxtapose my own ornamental forms with the brutal rawness of metal. This tension between delicacy and weight, decoration and construction, becomes a point of departure for telling personal stories.




