The BWA Contemporary art gallery

The mental vacationer comes to the sea not in search of adventure, but for a moment of retreat. They do not expect miracles – only a pause. They seek something between a reset and an escape, fully aware that the sea no longer belongs solely to contemplation. They know its modern face: loud, lined with ice cream and waffle stands, segmented by windbreaks, immersed in a festival of makeshift structures and seaside kitsch. They do not feel completely at home here, yet they do not resist. They exist – quietly on the edge. Their own towel, their own thought, a brief moment to breathe.

They are conscious of this tension – caught between expectation and reality. They long for distance, perhaps even a fleeting sense of true presence, but it does not come easily, for every corner of the landscape has already been named, photographed, described. The mental vacationer does not idealize the sea, yet neither do they reject it. Deep down, they still love it. Even with everything that has changed. They try to locate themselves between depth and surface, between silence and noise, between the romantic and the banal.

The Baltic can still be calm, raw, and quiet. It would be enough to leave it be – to not beautify it, to not drown it out. Yet, humans rarely respect this. Increasingly, the sea becomes merely a backdrop: for a photograph, a memory, a story we hope to bring back from vacation. Perhaps this is what hurts the most – even in a place that requires no explanation, we feel compelled to change it, improve it, tame it.

The mental vacationer is less a figure than a state – suspended between the need for rest and the awareness of its impossibility. They come to the Baltic seeking solace, yet can no longer gaze at the sea without carrying the weight of associations and contradictions. They wish, for a moment, to vanish into the horizon. Not completely, not forever. Rather: to dissolve into the landscape, to surrender to what is quiet, ordinary, and elusive. Disappearing into the horizontal is not escape, but a way of being that leaves no trace – a moment in which one can release the need for control.

The works in this exhibition take no definitive stance. They neither mock nor wholly affirm, neither fully embrace distance nor total closeness. They occupy a liminal space – between attentive observation and personal experience, between irony and melancholy. Here, the sea is not merely a backdrop, but a medium – a space reflecting emotional, social, and cultural states. Seen this way, the Baltic is more than a geographic place; it is a mental shore where different sensibilities meet and intertwine.

Curator: Claudia Spałek

Opening: Thursday, 17 October 2025, at 6:00 p.m.
The exhibition runs until 9 November.

Karol Gawroński (b. 1990)
Karol Gawroński is a visual artist and graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice. His practice focuses on observing and documenting the surrounding world. Through drawing and painting, he records everyday life, exploring urban and suburban environments, media representations, pop culture, and social spaces on the peripheries. He is particularly interested in micro-narratives – the individual and their relationship with space.

Gawroński has participated in solo exhibitions including At First Glance (Szałfynster, Katowice, 2025), Grinding Machine (CSW Kronika, Bytom, 2023), and Ich heiße Igor (Galeria Ateneum, Katowice, 2018), as well as group exhibitions such as Painting Exhibition. Still Life Collection from the BWA in Sieradz (BWA Sieradz, 2024), 12th Triennale of Small Painting Forms (Galeria Sztuki Wozownia, Toruń, 2022), and Is it Real? (Rondo Sztuki, Katowice, 2022).

He has received awards including the Triennale of Painting ANIMALIS (Galeria MM, Chorzów, 2023) and the Poster Competition as part of the JEDEN of 100 project (National Museum in Gdańsk, 2017). His works are held in collections such as the China Printing Museum in Beijing and BWA Sieradz.