"Wieloświaty" Exhibition by prof. Jan Buczkowski | The Faculty of Architecture at the Gdańsk University of Technology

Until October 12, the Marszałkowska 18 Art Gallery in Warsaw is hosting a unique exhibition titled “Multiverses” by Prof. Jan Buczkowski. It is an opportunity to experience timeless painting, where landscape, abstraction, and nature intertwine to form parallel worlds.

Karina Dudzińska writes about the exhibition:

“I often wonder whether the reality we know will eventually yield to the forces of nature. What did the sea I now gaze upon look like long ago? What kind of forest once grew where my apartment building now stands? Where do birds find shelter at night? Perhaps the world has already ended and begun again many times. Each of us will face our own end of the world—inevitable, and in that single moment of life, we are all equal before it. We may find hope in the theory of the Multiverse, which emerged in the 1960s as part of one interpretation of quantum physics: a collection of worlds existing side by side, continuously being created and recreated. In those worlds, we too exist—just a little different, in slightly different realities.

Jan Buczkowski’s works are a pure affirmation of nature. On his canvases, we encounter forms that are neither fully abstract nor entirely figurative—landscapes in a kind of superposition, to borrow from the language of physics, composed of lines that record the dynamic passage of time. From small, relief-like paintings created over twenty years ago—whose textured surfaces extend beyond the stretcher frame and where color gleams through the monochrome layers of thickly applied paint—to the large-scale works of recent years. Though these are more traditional paintings, their rich palette makes them spatial and vibrant.

Paradoxically, the artist’s practice is not focused on adding paint to form a composition, but on subtracting from it in search of light. In this way, the boundary between depiction, foreground, and background becomes blurred. This repetition is, at the same time, a quest for materiality within these intangible multiverses.”

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Prof. Jan Buczkowski is the head of the Department of Visual Arts at the Faculty of Architecture, Gdańsk University of Technology, and serves as the Rector’s Plenipotentiary for Artistic Affairs. Between 1995 and 2003, he co-founded Galeria Koło in Gdańsk — a non-commercial art space whose program centered on painting and the constructivist–conceptual tradition.

He has held numerous solo exhibitions, including at the BWA Gallery in Sopot (1987), the National Museum in Gdańsk (1997), the Promocyjna Gallery in Warsaw (2003), the Günter Grass Gallery in Gdańsk (2013), and the Refektarz Gallery in Kartuzy (2023). He has also participated in many group exhibitions in Poland and abroad — from Brussels and London to Istanbul, Bremen, Vilnius, and Kazimierz Dolny.

For photos from the exhibition opening click here.